Reported by Thomas.

Andreas Päffgen to me
Hi Quang Lam,
I tried Webcatalog on MacOS and could not find the following feature: Create Stand alone Links / Webapps, that can be started via the application folder standalone.

This would be a feature request as for 32bit windows as well.
Best regards
Andreas Päffgen

If you use Homebrew package manager on Mac to install Chrome and Chromium, you cannot use these engines, because the apps are not in ~/Applications but in /usr/local/Caskroom/google-chrome/latest and Webcatalog does not recognize the path.

Installing Chrome again in ~/Applications solves the problem for WebCatalog, but then you cannot take advantage of the package manager any longer.

The solution would be that WebCatalog knows the Homebrew Cask path.

The direct download links from the home page https://quang.im/webcatalog/ are incorrect. It appears you did not update the links when you appended your binary packages with "lite".

Your current 404 links are:
https://github.com/quanglam2807/webcatalog/releases/download/v1.0.0/webcatalog-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

https://github.com/quanglam2807/webcatalog/releases/download/v1.0.0/webcatalog-1.0.0.dmg

When they should be:
https://github.com/quanglam2807/webcatalog/releases/download/v1.0.0/webcatalog-lite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

https://github.com/quanglam2807/webcatalog/releases/download/v1.0.0/webcatalog-lite-1.0.0.dmg

Thank you

Creating a custom app with the default Electron icon fails because webcatalog can't find the icon asset. Should a) patch the path to the default icon and/or b) not throw for a missing icon.

When trying to use the Firefox engine, I always get the profile manager (like running firefox -ProfileManager -New-Instance, which does not contains just my default profile (or no profiles at all, when I moved my .mozilla folder to .mozilla.bak before).

The commandline in the process list is

/usr/lib/firefox/firefox --class 500px --P 500px https://500px.com/

But the profile is not created before (Firefox doesn't do this by itself and the Profilemanager dialog does not provide a hint that the profile must have the name 500px).

High-res icon is displayed in launcher. However, Chrome will override Taskbar icon with the page icon upon load. This lowers your Taskbar icon resolution.

not working manjaro

Google is adding PWA support to Chrome with v70 on Windows and v72 on macOS. And it works pretty well. So I think it's time to consider moving the product to maintenance stage.

Hi,

I love webcatalog and to be able to package any web app into a desktop app. After having using it for a while I have bought the full licence.

But there is a bug that defeats one of the purpose of the app: when trying to open a link in a tab by using either cmd+click or the contextual menu, the link opens in a new window. This defeats one of webcatalog benefits: to be able to access the whole context of a web app in a single window.

It would be great if link could simply open as tab.

I am using WebCatalog Lite 12.3.1 on Mac OS 10.13.4.

@sirweazel 2. Probably requires some coding - add the ability to associate the installed application to menu or application categories. Example: Install pixlr, and it associates with the "graphics" menu structure. Or create edit the category. When creating custom application, give you the option to edit application category. Thanks again for your project and quick responses.

When attempting to run a freshly created app, I get the following:

[ash@mbp]-[12:26:34]-[~/Applications/WebCatalog Lite Apps]
$ open Pulse\ SMS.app
LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/ash/Applications/WebCatalog Lite Apps/Pulse SMS.app.

The title is self-explanatory...

It would be great either to benefit from the extensions already installed in Chrome, or to be able to install extensions directly in the Webcatalog app. In the latter case, the support of this feature for both apps with the Chrome and Juli engine would be awesome!

I'm finding this application interesting. It's pretty cool. Thanks for the quick fix on the other issue (web links). I've noticed that when you remove an added app (either custom or one from the list selection) it removes it from the webcatalog-lite GUI, but not from the desktop environment GUI (in my case gnome). The files stay in the the /home/username/bin directory.

In the past, whenever I would open one of the apps it would log me in automatically ie to Gmail etc. but now it is requesting my password each time. What to do about this? I had 12.0, webcatalog lite, and I have tried installing version 12.3 but it doesnt seem to make a difference.

When using & (ampersand) in the application name, WebCatalog will not be able to launch the application on macOS.

Currently only support Google Chrome, but not Chromium

Feature Requests:

1. Probably fairly "easy" - Add "pretty" icon to appimage of webcatalog-lite. I'm not exactly sure what your brand icon is, or if you have one. If you do, then you should add it to the appimage. I'm not entirely sure how this is done, but I have other appimage applications that when integrating into the desktop environment also add their branded icon. I doubt yours is a plain old gear icon, but that is what it "integrates" with in the desktop environment. I apologize in advance if it is supposed to be a gear icon.

I'm using Debian 9 Stretch, with KDE, at kernel 4.9.0.6-amd4 and Webcatalog version 12.3.0.

After installing an App, it'll work properly (I have something with inject css, saying later), but if you reopen the app, and go to the installed apps tab, it'll still show the apps you previously deleted, but not showing it's picture, nor beingle able to open it. But, since I'm a free user, I can't add more apps since I "have" the other ones installed, so I need to manually delete them again to be able to install new ones (but reopening will still show the deleted ones, attaching pic to it). https://i.imgur.com/8fwLxrW.png

Also, using Juli as engine, I'm not sure if I should be able to inject the css from userstyles.org, but trying to ain't make any difference to the app (not knowing if that is really possible, I didn't opened another issue for this).

Steps to reproduce:

• Add Google Maps with Juli engine
• Start it
• ~/.config/Juli/Partitions/google-maps is created
• Close it, uninstall the Webapp
• The folder is not removed.

When using the chromium engine, the --user-data-dir folder .config/webcatalog-dropbox is removed correctly.

I've now installed WebCatalog on a new MacBook Pro with a clean macOS installation and the icon disappearance happens there as well. I was using Google Drive and the icon was there initially and then after an hour or so it disappeared. It reappeared once I closed it and re-opened it. I hope you can find a fix for this because I have so many WebCatalog apps and it comes confusing when app icons disappear.
Let me know what kind of information I could send you that would help with bug fixing.
Hans

One of the neat features Nativefier has is passing a --counter flag that will attempt to parse notification-looking titles (eg: (3) Facebook) and turn them into notification dots on the app icon. Would be great for Webcatalog to automatically attempt something similar.

Add support for Windows.

Hi guys,
I tried the last version of webcatalog and I never had any problem.
Now with this new version I can't install any software.
when I tried to install I become this: "We're sorry. Webcatalog has failed ton install...."

I wanted to purchase the payed version but with this problem I won't do it.
Thanks

nor many other apps. says
I get the message "We're sorry. WebCatalog has failed to install Google Calendar." why would this be?

Would be great to see this able to use Firefox (my default browser).

I find it frustrating not to be able to navigate in the apps like i normally do in a web app. It's neat to have a desktop-like feel when using the apps through WebCatalog, but since the content comes from the web I need the usual tools of a web browser.

The features of a web browser that I miss the more:

• Go back
• Be informed of pending page loadings with an animation
• Access the url to sometimes directly jump to the desired location using copy/paste
• Open links in tabs (already mentioned in issue #62)

With Fluid apps that I was using before, there are options to display these functionalities. It would be great if you could add these here too.

The main benefit of WebCatalog is to encapsulate a whole web app into a desktop app with all its context data, it is not necessary to "hide" the fact that it is sill the web, or at least this could be left to the user to decide.

I would really like the ability to set custom User Agents for the webapps. It doesn't have to be during creation but if editing the webapp were possible that would be great.

Example Use-case:

Instagram allows for you to upload from a web-browser but they restrict that option to "Mobile Browsers". If you can add a custom user agent to the Instagram webapp then a mobile browser user agent could be used instead which would make it possible to use Instagram as a desktop app.

This could also be applied to a lot of other stuff.

Adam to me

Running the latest version...uninstalled, removed APPdata for webcat and still get the below on a fresh install. Does not matter what URL i give, always the same exact error.

If I open one of the WebCatalog apps first, upon starting my Mac, it is impossible to open the main Chrome Browser from the Launch bar. I have tried using Juli instead of Chrome for the webcatalog apps, but same problem. I have to first quite ALL the webcatalog apps currently running, and then when I click Chrome to launch it, it actually opens up... if this could be fixed would be great, thanks! some bug somewhere...

When you try to add http://someserver:8080/some/path, webcatalog does not recognize it as valid URL.

its not reconognize my two browsers (chromium or chrome) i dont know why, i am on manjaro cinnamon.

thanks

Hi,

I bought a "License Key", but when I enter it in the app, I get the message "The license key you entered is invalid".

Please help me.
Arnaud

Hi! New contributor here - great project.

Problem

Although SSBs can be used for browsing any old website, even one that has an app-like aesthetic, users such as myself (and I assume many others) just want them for actual Web Applications - typically a single, JS-heavy page.

Example of a true Web App
Messenger.com

Example of a... web site
Kickstarter.com

While these both have Material design feels, the former is clearly a single-page web app (just like its native mobile counterpart) while the latter is a live listing of projects on a website that all have dedicated pages.

Rationale

I personally would never really want to containerize the latter not just because I wouldn't see as much of a need to leave it open all the time, but also because the lack of browser chrome is actually a hindrance in that case - and the isolation of the app conveys little benefits.

Examples

On Kickstarter you are highly likely, for example, to encounter external links. In a browser you would simply open a new tab without launching another application (annoying to do a lot) because it belonged there in the first place. You would likely want to browse multiple projects at a time, which is what the browser's tab interface was made for. On Messenger, though, the only "tab-able" content is already in a conveniently tabbable format. There is little reason to have multiple instances of it (which can cause issues anyway). There is an obvious reason to leave it open indefinitely.

Solutions

Tags and filters

I'm sure some people will disagree with me so rather than ditching these allegedly non-app items altogether what if we could hide them from the catalog? In this case I would suggest a tagging system and an option to filter the catalog by tags.

Webcatalog does not detect juli, when you installed it into a folder and added it to the path. In the source it seems, that it expects juli to be installed as a snap package instead of just running "juli" to get whatever binary is in the current $PATH.

Juli on the other hand contains a hardcoded /Applications/WebCatalog.app which cannot be found on linux either.

I can run both commands from the same terminal, but both are not able to find each other.

From David
And also I recommand that the app search bar should be shown wherever the screen is when scrolling up instead of scrolling up to the top.
Thanks.

Hi, several of my WebCatalog apps seem to have stopped working properly (Asana, Facebook Messenger), and when I try to upgrade WebCatalog it fails, and when I manually go to webcatalog.io I get:

And when I try to email [email protected] I get:

The response was:
The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect.
Learn more at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7720
[getwebcatalog.com 2400:cb00:2048:1::6818:6c69: timed out]

[getwebcatalog.com 2400:cb00:2048:1::6818:6d69: timed out] 
[getwebcatalog.com 104.24.109.105: timed out]
[getwebcatalog.com 104.24.108.105: timed out]

And it seems when I go to webcatalog.com the domain appears for sale.

MacOS 10.13.6, WebCatalog Version 12.6.1

When trying to create a custom app, it just returns a "We're sorry. WebCatalog has failed to install ***" message. Tested across different engines, all return same error. Installing from the directory works as intended.

Edit: Apparently only when installing with default icon.

@aarroz #11 (comment)

Hi Lam, do you think backup / restore apps via online Account, or iCloud / Dropbox / Google Drive is possible ? I just reinstalled the computer and reinstalling all the apps I created manually is a pain. best regards David Hoang

I actually use Safari as my default browser, and the old Webcatalog respected that and opened links from its apps in Safari tabs.

Alternatively, Chrome would be fine if that's too difficult, except I would like it to use my default Chrome profile. Right now it seems that it creates a new Chrome profile which doesn't have any of my extensions, cookies, etc.

Side note, this is amazing 👏

definitely a huge win moving off Electron

System Information

• System: Debian 9 Stretch KDE;
• Kernel: 4.9.0-6-amd64
• Software Version: 12.2.0-x86_64 AppImage
• Chromium Version: Version 66.0.3359.117 (Developer Build) built on Debian 9.4, running on Debian 9.4 (64-bit) (Installed from debian repo with apt)

Steps

1. Download webcatalog AppImage
2. Run AppImage
3. Choose Chromium Engine

Explanation

In the first use of webcatalog in my OS, it ain't recognize my Chromium installation (version above), showing "To continue, please install Chromium", but it's actually installed already.
Tested it in another debian 9 installation with XFCE, same problem.
Please tell me if you need more info, or if I'm mistaking something.

From David
here is another bug, that is the icons in "installed apps" tag are missing when the appimage file is reopened. please see the attachment.

I can't seem to have two web apps open if they both use Juli. Is this a known issue?

I get this on macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E199):

After I close an app for example Youtube, the Icon remains in the Dock.
If I then click on that Icon to open the App again, it just opens Chrome and not Youtube:

Opening the app from the Drawer works fine.

@swrobel Alternatively, Chrome would be fine if that's too difficult, except I would like it to use my default Chrome profile. Right now it seems that it creates a new Chrome profile which doesn't have any of my extensions, cookies, etc.

Actually, this is a feature to protect yourself from cross-website trackers.

fastmail
skype

i dont get any type of notification when i get a new skype message or a new email