Posts tagged os x lion

Automator is a very handy program that never gets much attention from the general public even though Mac owners will find the program preinstalled in their Applications folder.

Automator’s pretty easy to use and this example shows you how to use it to quickly and easily make your own Mac OS app out of any webpage you like:

Here’s the procedure for building an app that keeps a webpage open in a floating window:

1) Launch Automator.

2) Create a new App. (Or a Workflow. But an App will be cooler because you can have it in the Launchpad and start it up with a single click.)

3) Find and drag the “Get Specified URLs” action into your workflow. Just type the name into the search box until Automator finds it for you.

4) Paste in the URL of the site you want to view.

5) Find and drag the “Website Popup” action into the workflow. Choose a size for the window.

6) Save. Done.

Your workflow will look like this:

And when you run the app, it’ll put up a popup window that looks like this:

It’s a real app. It’ll stick around and float above your other windows until you dismiss it. You can move it into other Spaces and do pretty much whatever you want with it.

Source: Making Desktop Webapps in Lion – Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)