Unity Launcher to allow Gmail Docky Docket install

[Oweoqi]

Just a feature request to allow the installation of the Gmail Docky Docket in the Unity Launcher.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Interesting. We're preparing a new Launcher API coming up to help with that.

[Guiodic (Guido Iodice) (guido-iodice)]

Hi, a question: Is this API able to work with an arbitrary application? For example, is possible with this API write a plugin for banshee and control banshee from the unity launcher?

Another question: W7+IE9 has an interesting feature: a website (enabled for this) can be controlled with the dock. API is public and Wordpress uses already it. I think should be useful to reimplement it in Unity launcher.

see: http://internetexplorer.wordpress.com/

[Guiodic (Guido Iodice) (guido-iodice)]

p.s. I dont know if a Firefox plugin is necessary for this.

[Bartosz Zasieczny (siekacz)]

Proper name for these launcher applets could be simply 'Squarelets'. They could be similar to 'squares' in Windows Phone 7.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Hi all, the current plan is not that you can have full fledged
"applets" in the launcher. The launcher reflects your favorite- and
running applications and that wont change with the API additions we
have coming up.

The stuff we have in the pipe will land in libunity and will allow
apps to add emblems and counters to their launcher icons as well as
controlling their quicklists (aka right click context menus). That
said ideas and input is still more than welcome of course :-)

To answer Guiodic's questions: 1) Yes, any app will be able to use
this new api either via a plugin or natively. 2) This wont be possible
off the bat, but you could get to it by writing a browser extension
using libunity or something I guess. It's an interesting proposition
at least :-)

[Robert Dyer (psybers)]

I really hope your plans are to support (a subset of?) the DockManager API. If that were the case, you would inherit a lot of helpers that are already written and supported by both Docky and AWN!

https://launchpad.net/dockmanager

http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Writing_Helpers#DockManager_DBus_Interface_Specification

That API has the ability to add emblems, badges/counters, etc and add to the items popup menus. This sounds like what you proposed.

[Jason Smith (jassmith)]

;)

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

@Robert: The dockmanager API is, unsurprisingly, designed for a dock. The Unity launcher is not a dock (I didn't make this decision, but that's the fact of the matter). Of course we could support the API nonetheless, after all "dock" is just a string used in the namespacing ;-)

The above aside, I can assure that that we/I investigated the API you link to, but came to the decision that it is not a good API ("not good" as in "actively bad"). There are many reasons why this is so, and if you're interested in the whys of this I can elaborate; but for now I shall spare everyone the digression :-)

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

As seen from the specification (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/LauncherAPI), Unity won't support DockManager API.

But you can always use this applet:
https://launchpad.net/unity-mail