these days were surrounded by things
like chromebooks pine book pros and and
devices I mean the Chromebook is the
perfect example of a device that
utilizes the Internet as an app
infrastructure right so I think about
things like like my Google Drive and
Google Docs and Google sheets and and
and how those are very fast becoming my
applications for doing things like
document editing mm-hmm I don't install
Microsoft Office anymore
now right I use in my browser my Google
Docs it's how I do it
you had Microsoft like Word and all that
you can they've got online based like
Outlook has gone into the cloud it's
like a browser-based thing but so these
are all things that they used to be
applications on our computer and now
they're progressively becoming more and
more cloud driven and that means they
are accessible through your web browser
but there's kind of like that old-school
feel about having the native app on your
computer having you know to do it in
your web browser feels like you're going
on a website to do it in the app feels
like you're opening a program and and
there's less screen real estate that's
wasted to things like the address bar
yeah yeah bookmarks and that kind of
slime example quickbooks online perfect
i use that for an organization that I'm
with and it's funny because I have it
installed on the computer yeah but then
I can also log in and and use it online
on my personal computer looks exactly
the same runs exactly this yeah but even
psychologically within my head I'm like
I would rather use the app right cuz
that's the app it's a web browser and
you've got the address bar and
everything else so there have been
applications and and browsers themselves
have things like app mode and and
abilities to create a bit more of a
native feel to websites right so that
they feel more like native apps
but there's it's it's never really been
solidified as a standard so what rises
up and then fizzles away like Firefox
used to have a great mechanism for doing
this for creating an app kind of window
for your for your browser sessions but
it got discontinued so then it just
fizzled out but peppermint OS has done
something incredible with a tool that
they call ice and ice is so what they
call this is SSB which is a
site-specific browser but the interface
is really unique in that it it is
specifically it's not a web browser that
allows you to save an icon to your
desktop that simply opens that web site
every time you double click on it now
it's it creates launchers on your Linux
computer that look like the they look
like a native application it repairs all
of that browser stuff around the edges
and everything else oh very cool but
they've made it very very simple but I'm
not using peppermint okay I'm actually
using Linux Mint and on Linux Mint which
is a debian derivative it's also it's
based on Ubuntu and this will go for
Ubuntu what what I want to show you is
for any Debian based distro so that's
Debian obviously we've wound to mint
Linux Mint so I'm on Linux Mint 19 and
it's it's fine for me to do those thing
this on any of those distros okay so I'm
gonna jump into my web browser my
current one which is Google Chrome and
I'm gonna jump over to now observe this
URL that I'm gonna type in here
peppermint OS dot-com slash guide slash
ice and when I bring that up here we go
an introduction to site specific
browsers they've got a great example
there with Oh with the pixel editor
which is a web-based image editor but by
using ice it
looks like a native app on the computer
really does how sweet is that the
interface is stellar but because I'm not
on peppermint OS it doesn't it's not
available work on my distro right
however peppermint OS is open source
right
it's Debian based if you've got a Debian
based machine you're able to install the
things that they have open sourced and
compiled for their distro on my distro
so here I am on Linux Mint let's see if
this is going to work for us so we're
gonna grab the source from not the
source but a binary packages from
Launchpad dotnet slash tilde peppermint
OS / plus archive / open to slash ice -
dev slash + packages and this takes us
to the packages folder for the ice
development from the pepper mint OS team
and you see the latest version at the
time of this broadcast is version 6.0
7.0 point 7 I should say so I'm gonna
click on that and let's take a look at
what we have here we've got packages and
builds here's a build for amd64
so because I am on a 64-bit Intel
processor I'm okay to click on that and
download the build
there's the Debian package right there
and here it comes I'm gonna keep that
file and then I'm gonna click on it
presumably dpkg is gonna try to launch
it and ask me what I want to do what is
this web app integration for peppermint
ice front end blah blah blah install
package kind of love the way Linux makes
installers these days at so much
than the default where you used to have
to log into terminal yeah
compiling from source I mean you can do
that so maybe you're not on AMD 64 and
you need to compile all right so that's
done what's changed close everything out
nothing's changed so I'm gonna click on
here and I'm gonna type in ice and lo
and behold there's an application now on
my computer called ice and just like
that I've got my simple what is it
called SSB is a site-specific browser
they call it a simple site-specific
browser manager okay so it's this easy
to create launchers and when I say a
launcher I'm talking you know how
onerous it can be to add things to like
your internet category here let's say we
want to turn YouTube into an app so
let's call this YouTube and the URL is
HTTP colon slash slash youtube.com and
we're on the menu I'm actually not gonna
put it in Internet even though it's a
website I'm gonna put it in multimedia
Wow what do I want the icon to look like
I'm gonna try this use site fav icon I
have yet to see that work it doesn't
seem to work so what I'm gonna do
instead is I'm going to click on my
browser and I'm going to type YouTube
icon I can jump into images I'm gonna
click on tools I'm going to click on
color I'm gonna choose transparent then
I'm gonna grab a transparent YouTube
icon that doesn't have a background I'm
gonna save that to my computer I'm gonna
throw that into pictures I'm gonna make
a folder called icons and save it there
done now I have a file that quickly so
go into my home into where did I put it
pictures where's pictures there it is
okay icons YouTube alright so now I've
chosen the YouTube icon there we go
funny
notice it will support Chrome chromium
Vivaldi or Firefox so that's the back
end it's going to use then it also so
I'm going to choose Chrome because
that's my browser okay
it's detected that I also have Firefox
on here but I don't use it
create an SSB with an isolated browser
profile that means that within this app
if you will you are not going to it's
not going to share the session with your
real browser so I've logged into YouTube
in Chrome if I don't have that checked
it will also it will be logged in in the
app so it's almost like an incognito
mode a sort of but it will no it's more
like its own profile okay so you can log
into your youtube profile but it will
only be logged in there so then similar
so by contrast in chrome you will not be
logged in right okay clear you can
choose and and feel free to play with
that setting see what what way you want
it to be so I'm gonna say yes I want
this to be an isolated browser with
Chrome and I'm gonna go apply well again
it doesn't seem to have done anything
but if I click on my Linux Mint menu and
I go into sound and video
I now see a button called YouTube no way
that garnet these things let's uncheck
these things just because it does see
because remember it's created a new
profile right so I'm gonna say ok and
now I'm gonna close that just because
now that I've done that I want to show
you from scratch now that I've turned
off those things so sound a video
YouTube it's not gonna ask me those
things again okay so YouTube is now its
own window its own app it's it's going
to behave very very much like an app but
it's using Chrome as its background as
its backend right so if you find that
chrome performs better than Firefox
choose chrome if you find it's the other
way around use Firefox right if you want
to remove one of those launchers from
your menu so say I want to remove
YouTube I can actually go to remove tab
in ice highlight it and click on remove
and that will actually get it get rid of
it you can do as many of these as you
want if you want to add like a category
5 TV let's say maybe you want to do the
live category 5 live so let
do that let's go live cat 5 TV so then
whenever and you'll probably want our
Icona if for the sake of the the speed
of tonight's demonstration I'm not going
to do that right now but you already saw
how to do that
okay so category 5 live is under sound
video there it is up there again turn
these things off oh I put like a
underscore or something but it's still
working so so now I've got a launcher
for category 5 when we're live so when
we're live boom there we go
Wow inception right that's super super
easy well is that so it is super super
easy really quick works really well it's
effective and it's supported it's open
source and it's available on any Debian
distro that with a DB file it's already
compiled for amd64
and I think you'll find other compiles
there as well if you dig through right
so check that out it's called ice and
from the folks who bring us peppermint
OS thank you very good thank you for
that that's a great tool