[launcher] Web favorites support

[Florian Boucault]

The launcher should support receiving websites url via drag&drop and create corresponding favorites.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

1. omsk has a chromium extension that allows favoriting a webpage; unity monitors .desktop files in a given location where chromium stores its favorites
2. unity has support for webapps but its internals and use are unclear; investigation should be conducted so that we match that feature

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Point 1 in comment #1 is incorrect: unity doesn’t monitor .desktop files in a given directory. Instead, the chromium extension directly invokes unity with the --webapp option and passes it the full URL to be favorited.

Unity then fetches the page at the URL passed, looks for a corresponding favicon, and builds a desktop file that launches chromium-browser with the given URL.

Note #1: the implementation is quite tied to a specific browser (chromium).

Note #2: AFAIK the code for the chromium extension is not published anywhere but in a private branch in the Ubuntu Light project.

Note #3: webapp support in the current version of unity in Maverick is broken/unmaintained (see upstream bug #660157), is it going to be in Natty?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Set as high as it's a really neat feature. The assumption made here is that the effort to implement it is not too high (1 day of work). What do you think Olivier?

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I’d estimate the effort needed to more than one day.
This is roughly the list of tasks:
 1) Implement a command-line switch to unity-qt-launcher that allows passing in URLs to be favorited
 2) Implement URL and favicon fetching, and building a desktop file with the information retrieved
 3) Port the chromium extension from Omsk

Optionally, we should also port the extension for firefox, if such an extension already exists, and write it from scratch otherwise.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

I am not sure 3) is in the scope of that bug. Bill?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Interesting read from Jorge: http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/2883661045/other-ways-to-integrate-with-web-apps

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

this has regressed in maverick version and no longer works. pmcgowan assured me it used to work. appears to be working in natty.

two things here:
High:
1) make sure dragging from url field works in maverick and natty, backport fix accordingly

Lower priority:
2) if time (lower priority) if we could improve the visualization in the launcher on the drop. currently regardless of where you drop the launcher is created at the bottom of the list. Would be nice if it worked like the drop when reordering launchers.
3) if time. would be great if you could drag a) the actual url b) the favicon in the url field c) the entire tab and they all did the same thing

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The regression was introduced by revision 424 in lp:unity-2d/0.4:

"""
Backported new launcher from trunk but deactivated:
- dropping of content on the launcher
- reordering of applications by drag and drop
"""

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The regression is fixed in the branch linked (lp:~osomon/unity-2d/maverick-webfavs-reactivate-dnd).

Regarding points 2 and 3 in comment #7, Bill, can you please file separate bug reports?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Separate bug reports filed:

2) https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/747129
3) https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/747131