Uninstalled webapps don't appear in the Dash Apps Lens

[John Lea]

Uninstalled webapps don't appear in the Dash Apps Lens

Because WebApps don't need to be 'installed' in the traditional sense, and they are very lightweight, we would like to ship 13.04 with all WebApps installed by default.

This will solve the problem of WebApps not appearing in the Dash Apps Lens.

We will still need the WebApps 'discovery' popup that appears under the URL bar in the Firefox and Chromium browsers. However we will need to change the text to say:

"This website is available as an Ubuntu webapp. Would you like to pin it's icon to the Launcher?"

The default button text should change to "Pin to Launcher", with a secondary option of "No thanks!"

This change mirrors the work we are doing with the Smart Scopes project where all of the available scopes will be installed by default.

[Will Cooke (willcooke)]

Hi John,

We have a fix in progress to make the available WebApps appear in the apps lens as well as the USC - it's to do with the way they are packaged, they appear as "technical items" rather than normal apps, and getting this fixed is on my TODO list.

A potential issue with the wording suggested above: What if I want to install the integration but not pin it to my launcher? Of course, I could then unpin it. Hmm - yes, this probably isn't a problem. Just me being picky.

We will press ahead with the packaging fix to make sure that the webapps are not "technical items", and also implement the new text etc as above.

Let me know if that's not what you want to happen.

[Alexandre Abreu (abreu-alexandre)]

Do we need to to appear as "Installed Apps" or "More suggestions" from the USC feed?

In the case of Installed Apps we need to ship an extra desktop file with the webapps packages (the ones already existing). At the moment, the desktop files are being generated at "runtime" by us. This is needed because we support "dynamic" launcher actions that are added to the desktop file on demand. So we would ship a desktop file with a webapp that needs to be "seen by the dash", and override it in ~/.local/share/applications (same as now) to be able to "customize" it on demand,

In the case of "More suggestions", we need to tie in w/ USC and what's missing on their end.

I added a blueprint for that task

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/libunity-webapps/+spec/webapps-in-dash-app-lens

[John Lea (johnlea)]

@abreu-alexandre; ideally all the WebApps will appear as "Installed Apps" in the Dash. The WebApps do not have to appear in USC, therefore one possibility open to you is to write a scope that plugs in to the Dash and includes the WebApps alongside local apps underneath the "Installed Apps" category header.

Ping me on IRC if you would like to discuss further.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.