Why "create application shortcut" doesn't work on OS X Chrome | Hacker News Reader

Why "create application shortcut" doesn't work on OS X Chrome

chromium.org

26 pointslong6 comments

I am glad they are thinking about this. There is (weirdly, IMO) currently no good app that can do this on the Mac -- only the awful and ancient Fluid.app, and the horrifically abysmal FireFox+WebRunner0.1pre12whatever thing.

I love this feature on Windows, and it is our preferred method of deploying in-house web apps to end users.

So what exactly is "awful and ancient" about Fluid.app?

Very surprised, as it works on Linux.

"A shortcut should appear to be an application to the operating system (Spotlight, Finder, etc.)"

In the not too far future that would mean signing it. Shipping the private key with the app is out, so the signing would have to happen on Google's servers.

"A shortcut must have a customizable name and icon […] the name must be displayed in the menu bar."

I think the name that shows leftmost in the menubar is part of the signed binary (otherwise, one could build an app that perfectly impersonates another one). So, changing the name in the Finder should trigger a resigning of the app (on Google's servers, per the above). I doubt that is possible, as it would require some low-level hacking. (counterexamples I can think of are Interface Builder and AppleScript's saved as application. I think both are special-cased.

For now, signing is far from necessary (and for the next many years). I think that'd be too much future-thinking, without knowing what actually is about to come.

And yes, you can rename an app in Finder as any other file/folder :)

Ok, we disagree about our expectations w.r.t. Code signing. I think it will become obligatory withtin 2 years.

As to the renaming: I know that, but I was commenting on the requirement to have the application menu following renames. A visit to developer.apple.com learns me that that is possible. I have not checked it, though, and the default for a Xcode cocoa application is to use a string from inside the bundle, not the file name.

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