Save as Web Application

When saving a web page it's possible to save the web page as stand-alone Web Application. This creates a real Universal Binary application for this web page.

Technically the new application is an iCab browser where many features and GUI elements are removed, which will only display this web site. This is useful for all the Web Applications like "Google Documents", "Google Mail" etc. which look like normal Desktop applications and which have a similar user interface like normal Desktop applications. When saving these sites as "stand-alone Web Application" the user can use these Web Applications like ordinary desktop applications, they have their own icon, they can be placed in the Dock, they have their own private preferences, cookies, history etc.

Because Web Applications like "google documents" usually use buttons, Drag&Drop instead of following normal links, the URL field, the forward/back buttons often can't be used anymore. So by default the browser toolbar is switched off.

When saving a site as "stand-alone Web Application" the user can enter the start page and a filter which defines which URLs the web application is allowed to access. Both settings are already filled out by iCab so usually these don't need to be changed. In some cases it can be nevertheless necessary to add some filters to the predefined URL filter for example when a web application uses multiple domain names. One example is the photo site "Flickr.com" where the login to the site is done through the "Yahoo.com" site. So the predefined URL filter ("http*://*.flickr.com/*" which allows access to all pages of "Flickr.com") must be changed so that also the access to yahoo.com is allowed (for example using "http*://*.flickr.com/*, http*://*.yahoo.com/*" as URL filter).

The user can configure which languages are included in the saved Web Application. One language must be activated. The more languages are activated the more space is needed for the "stand-alone Web Application" on disk.

iCab will use the Favorites Icon of the web site as application icons for the new Web Application by default. But the user can select any other image or icon as well.

After the very first start of the newly created Web Application which may require a login, the user should fill out the login form first and then use the menu "View > Save Forms" to save the login data. This way the user doesn't need to fill out the login form anymore when the application is launched the next time.

It's possible to save the same Web site as multiple "stand alone Web Applications" with different names. Each of these applications will open the same web site, but because each copy has its own private settings, form data, cookies etc. each copy can be used for different user accounts. And all these copies can be used at the same time, so you can access different user accounts at the same time, which would be impossible with a normal web browser.

You can install the same filter for the Filter Manager of iCab in the Web applications as well. TO do this you have to drag the filer file in the finder onto the web applications file icon. This way you can use the advertising filter in Web applications as well.