There are hundreds of ways to add website shortcuts to your desktop: Prism apps, Chrome WebApps, good ol’ fashioned dragged n’ dropped shortcuts on your desktop. The issue? Most of these require some effort on your part.

Enter Web Launcher and it’s crusade against hassle.

Web Launcher

How it sounds is how it is: It installs website shortcuts to the appropriate menus along with some pretty icons. The links open in your default browser so there’s nothing revolutionar and nothing magic about what it does – just a quick way to save some time manually adding them yourself.

Game? Add the Web Launcher PPA (Lucid & Maverick only): –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vicox/weblauncher

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install chosen-package-name

Three ‘meta’ packages are available to install: –

‘weblauncher-google’ gives you menu shortcuts to: –

  • Gmail
  • Google Calendar
  • Google Reader
  • Google Docs

‘weblauncher-social’ gives you: –

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Installing ‘weblauncher’ gives you the entire family.