Erica Sadun, TUAW.com editor has created a utility to launch a single URL from a SpringBoard icon of iPhone’s menu. She has managed to develope so called URL Launcher kit. You can download this kit HERE and then customize it with your unique icon and URL address.

This is step-by-step manual to create your own home screen URL launcher.

Surf to the Natetrue’s Open URL page and download the OpenURL package Version 0.1. And follow this manual:

1. Unpack the OpenURL tar to retrieve the OpenURL.app bundle.
2. Inside the OpenURL.app folder, edit the icon.png file to reflect your brand identity. This icon appears on the home SpringBoard screen so make it look pretty and consistent with the overall look of the other icons.
3. Edit Info.plist with a unique string. It defaults to com.sadun.ReplaceThis. Change it to something different.
4. Edit url.txt and replace the current URL (http://waiterrant.net, a favorite of mine) with the URL you want to launch.
5. Rename OpenURL.app to the name you want to appear in SpringBoard, e.g. MyBrand.app.
6. Repackage the app and distribute.

The main idea: OpenURL tool look inside the url.txt file for a URL, then reads it in and launches Safari with this URL, that’s it.

I have to note that you cannot use openURL utility to bypass Safari’s 8 tabs limit. When 8 tabs are opened, Safari launches and displays an alert saying “Could not open a new page because there are too many pages open.” Tap OK to dismiss.”

Fortunately, the iPhone supports the NSBundle class. With it, you can tell it to look in the top-level folder of the bundle for a file named url with a txt extension:

basepath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@”url” ofType:@”txt” inDirectory:@”/”];

Once read in, use the whitespace and newline NSCharacterSet to trim any extraneous spaces and new lines from the edges of the URL:
urlstring = [[NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:basepath encoding:1 error: error] stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet: [NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]];

Finally, create an NSURL from that string and open it:

baseurl = [[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath:urlstring];
[self openURL:baseurl];

Big thanks to TUAW

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