POSTED August 6th 2011

Come on, you know you want to buy me a beer!

It's probably no surprise by now that I'm a Linux kinda guy. For the past few months, I've only been using Ubuntu 11.04, which if you haven't tried it then you should.

One thing that's been really bothering me is how to get the application shortcut for ZendStudio into the applications bar (so I can hit the start key on my keyboard and type ZendStudio (enter). Seems simple? I thought so, but apparently not.

For anyone else wondering, here are my incredibly simple instructions.

First navigate to your desktop folder:

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~/Desktop

Next we want to create a simple desktop shortcut. (I've called mine ZendStudio.desktop)

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touch ZendStudio.desktop

Now go ahead and edit that file. I use gedit, but if you're comfortable with nano, go ahead and use that. (replace PATH_TO_ZEND_STUDIO_FOLDER with your ZendStudio folder location (from root).

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[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon[en_GB]=PATH_TO_ZEND_STUDIO_FOLDER/icon.xpm
Name[en_GB]=ZendStudio
Exec=PATH_TO_ZEND_STUDIO_FOLDER/ZendStudio
Name=ZendStudio
Icon=PATH_TO_ZEND_STUDIO_FOLDER/icon.xpm

You might be wondering what that icon.xpm is right? Well, as the name suggests, it's the icon that the guys over at Zend included in the package.
Every application needs an icon right?

Next, we want to move that file, so hop back into the terminal (assuming you're still in the ~/Desktop location)

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sudo mv ZendStudio.desktop /usr/share/applications
cd /usr/share/applications
sudo chmod 644 ZendStudio.desktop
sudo chown root:root ZendStudio.desktop

Above, we moved the ZendStudio.desktop file into the applications folder, applied the permissions and hopefully all went wonderfully well!

If this worked for you, please let me know in the comments. If it didn't, let me know what paths you're using and I'll see what I can do to help you out.

This will work for a wide variety of applications, just adjust the code accordingly.

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Roger commented on Nov 29th 2011

Hi Ted,

Yes, you should try to restart and see if that helps. Alternatively, make sure you applied the right permission on the file to execute it as the current user.
Let me know how you get on, and I'll help you more if I can.

Cheers,
Roger

Ted commented on Nov 28th 2011

This doesn't seem to work for Ubuntu 11.10 (64-bit) as I did exactly what you are describing here. After I have done what your blog post describes I hit the Start key (between left CTRL and left ALT for me) and I start typing ZendStudio. It doesn't show. Any ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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