If you’ve installed the preview release of Unity Web Apps in Ubuntu 12.04, or are reading this for a later release where it’s included by default, you may be wondering what sites can use it.
To help you explore the exciting opportunities that the Unity Web API brings, here is an exhaustive list of websites that are currently supported out of the box in Unity WebApps.
News Sites:
- BBC News (bbc.co.uk/news)
- CNN News (edition.cnn.com)
- Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com/)
- Google News (news.google.com)
- Yandex News (news.yandex.ru)
- Google Reader (google.com/reader)
- Reddit (reddit.com)
- NewsBlur (newsblur.com)
Reddit is partiualrly handy when used with the HUD, giving you quick access to a number of sub-reddits and popular content.
BBC News, Yahoo! News and CNN News all make use of Ubuntu’s native notification system for delivering headlines:
Mail services:
- GMail (mail.google.com)
- Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com)
- Yandex Mail (mail.yandex.ru)
- QQ Mail (mail.qq.com)
- Windows Live Mail (login.live.com)
- Mail RU (mail.ru)
Social Networks:
- Facebook (facebook.com)
- Twitter (twitter.com)
- Google+ (plus.google.com)
- VK.com (vk.com)
- LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
- Tumblr (tumblr.com)
As a heavy user of both Twitter and Google+ I appreciate the Messaging Menu integration for alerts and counts of new messages and notifications.
I would dearly love to see on-item badge counts added, but for now this is an almost perfect solution.
Games:
- Cut the Rope (cuttherope.ie)
- Angry Birds (chrome.angrybirds.com)
- Lord of Ultima (lordofultima.com)
- Command and Conquer: Tiberium Alliances (alliances.commandandconquer.com)
These two games don’t sport a whole lot of Unity integration (that I’ve seen) but you do get gorgeous launcher icons for them that are accessible from the Dash.
Office Apps:
- Google Docs (docs.google.com)
- Google Calendar (google.com/calendar)
Google Docs sports some standout integration with Ubuntu’s HUD. No more do you need to menu hunt when editing a document, spreadsheet or presentation; just hit the Alt key and type what you want to do…
Music & Video
- Last.fm (lastfm.com)
- Libre.fm (libre.fm)
- Pandora (pandora.com)
- Grooveshark (grooveshark.com)
- Hulu Player (hulu.com/watch)
- Yandex Music (music.yandex.ru)
- Rdio (rdio.com)
- YouTube (youtube.com)
- Ubuntu One Music (one.ubuntu.com)
To butcher a famous Shakespeare quote: ‘If music be played through your web-browser …control it through Ubuntu’s Sound Menu.’
Here’s Grooveshark proving how neat this feature is:
Misc
- Launchpad (launchpad.net)
- WordPress.com (wordpress.com)
- Amazon (amazon.com)
- Amazon Cloud reader (read.amazon.com)
- Subway IRC
More to come
Although these 30 or so websites and services are supported out of the box in Unity WebApps they aren’t the only sites that can be supported.
Web developers can add Unity web Apps support to their site by following the Unity Web Api documentation.
Which sites would you like to see integrated in Unity, and with which parts of the desktop?