Gmail and Ta-Da Desktop Shortcuts

I use a lot of web-based applications, Gmail and Ta-da Lists being two of the most used. I also use multiple Firefox profiles for heavily used web apps. I started doing this because my default Firefox profile is used for development, and I add a ton of Firefox extensions. Using multiple profiles allows me to run a light Firefox install on web apps, and I can customize extensions or browser settings just for the web app.

I recently setup some desktop shortcuts (icons and all) for these instances of Firefox.

First, I create shell scripts called gmail and tada.

#!/bin/bash

export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
/opt/firefox-1.5/firefox -P gmail https://gmail.google.com/ &

Firefox 1.5 requires the environment variable MOZ_NO_REMOTE when running multiple profiles. The "-P gmail" says to open with my gmail profile. You can create the initial profile by running "firefox -P" from the command line. Again, set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1. I also set MOZ_NO_REMOTE and call my default profile explicitly from my desktop applications menu.

Once the scripts are in place and menu links are ready, all that's left to do is to link to the script from the desktop and add the icon. In KDE, this is just a matter of right-clicking on the desktop, selecting "Create New... Link to Application", and filling in the form.

Feel free to reuse the icons, if you use the same apps as me, and want to try something similar. Gmail icon. Ta-da icon.

Posted by deryck on March 14, 2006

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