How to convert a web application to a desktop application on Peppermint Linux

Site-specific browsers or Single-Site Browser (SSB), appeared, became a transient trend, and then almost disappeared completely. The term refers to packages, containing the essentials from a regular browser, redirected to the URL from a specific website or even better, from a web application.

Theoretically, this combination could work and give the impression of a local application. However, SSB failed because they did not initially do this. Since then, technology has improved, the web has expanded, and today, many web-based solutions are even more powerful than local software in terms of functionality.

The team behind Peppermint OS are some pioneering visionary people who realize this is the destination that everyone is heading to, then equip their Ubuntu variant with a specialized application for this task. . That application, called Ice, can generate SSBs from any website, with four different browser technologies as the main focus.

The most common Ice application you use is ice-ssb, which comes pre-installed by default on Peppermint Linux and can be found in the main menu of the distribution. It is considered an integral part of Peppermint and serves as one of the main features of this distribution. However, there is a way to install Ice in other distributions. Unfortunately, the process is not as simple as selecting an app through the App Store.

The simplest case is if you are running a Debian-based distribution, where you can download the application in deb format from the developer launchpad (see link: https://launchpad.net/~peppermintos) / + archive / ubuntu / ice-dev / + packages ). You can then install the downloaded file into your Debian-based distribution (like Ubuntu or Mint) with the command:

 sudo dpkg -i ice_6.0.6_all.deb 

Get the target URL

Visit the website you want to convert into an application with your favorite browser. If you want a specific subpage to appear whenever a webpage is run as an app, don't copy the home page or the login screen URL. Instead, go to the specific subpage you want and copy its URL.

In case you didn't notice, the URL of a web page will vary depending on which pages are loaded in the browser. By copying a specific page URL, the application version of the website you are creating with Ice will start there, whenever you run it.

Name the application and the URL

Run Ice from Peppermint's main menu. Start by entering a name for the application in the first field available. In the next field, paste the address of the webpage you copied from the previous step.

Identify application categories

'Where in the menu?' Drop down menu Allows you to specify which sections appear in the main menu of Peppermint, which applications you create will be displayed. Indeed, everything you will turn into SSB is a website or web application. However, not all websites and web applications are the same. Using the same general term for everything will lead to chaos, if you plan to create multiple SSBs. Google Docs may work better if it is labeled 'Office' , and YouTube and Spotify should be better classified as 'Multimedia' .

Choose an icon

To make apps you create recognizable at a glance, avoid using the default Ice icon for all of them. Ice gives you two options to do this.

With 'Select an icon' , you can select JPG or PNG image files to use as SSB icons.

'Use site favicon' is the easiest - and automatic - solution of the two options, as it tries to capture and use the favicon (shortcut icon) of the official website the same way it is displayed in the browser, whenever you visit it.

In my tests, the article found that sometimes this doesn't work as usual, and the generated SSB has a default icon. In such cases, you should probably search and download a related image from the Internet, which you can then use as an icon via the previous option. Try entering the site name plus favicon in Google Image Search.

Browser and profile

In the case of this example, the article only installs Firefox on Peppermint, so that is the only option available. If you already have Chrome, Chromium, Opera or Vivaldi installed, Ice can use one of these browsers as a tool to run the application. You can select the browser tool by clicking the appropriate option in the lower left corner of the Ice window.

For added security and if you do not select Firefox (which is the default behavior), you should enable 'Create the SSB with an isolated browser profile' , directly above the browser options. This option allows you to create a separate profile for SSB; if not, it will work according to the default configuration you use in your browser.

All in the main menu

By clicking Apply at the bottom right of the window, the website / app will wait for you in the main Peppermint menu, under the sub-category you have selected.

The process is instantaneous because, in fact, it only stores a new shortcut and icon item in the main menu of Peppermint. No need to install any additional software or copy files - the browser is all that is needed here.

Firefox inside

With one click on the new menu item, the site will appear in the browser window. It will take up the entire window and nothing (such as buttons or menus) can indicate that it is running in the browser. However, that does not mean that the browser below will magically disappear.

For the most part, if not all, browser shortcuts will still work. For example, pressing F5 will refresh the displayed page.

The article found that even though the Firefox menu is hidden, a single click at the position it usually displays will cause this menu to appear, giving access to all browser options and functions. as usual.

Hope you are succesful.