4 ms·

Native apps are often great, but this is one area where web apps have a distinct advantage. It would be wonderful if native apps adopted a standard URL scheme f

Native apps are often great, but this is one area where web apps have a distinct advantage. It would be wonderful if native apps adopted a standard URL scheme for manipulating state. I especially wish mobile apps would practice deep linking more often and make said URLs discoverable. For iOS I've come across AppTalk[1] before, does anyone know of something similar for Android? [1]: https://app-talk.com/ https://app-talk.com/

rektide 5y ago
Google has been driving actual URLs into apps, via the creation of Web Share API and Web Share Target API. One doesn't need a subsystem within the operating system, when the internet already does the job. For reference, here's app-talk describing their core capability: > The goal of the x-callback-url specification is to provide a standardized means for iOS developers to expose and document the methods they make available to other apps. Using x-callback-url’s source apps can launch other apps passing data and context information, and also provide parameters instructing the target app to return data and control back to the source app after executing an action. I do love this idea of showing what capabilities are afforded. This is a little different to me than the Ubiquotous Linking, which reads more to me about exposing data, rather than capabilities. I think both are important!!! Android Apps have intents, but AFAIK it's kind of a barren wasteland of interoperability. There's no registry, no way to see what actions are available. One kind of just has some intents they listen for, and fires off intents they know how to issue. There's no rendezvous, no finding out what one might do. I could be mistaken. But it feels enormously fantastically tightly coupled. And App-Talk seems aimed to make a bit more ad-hoc connections possible. Web Share/Web Share Target do fill this gap nicely, but it is weird that Android in general doesn't seem to have much here.
- iansinnott 5y ago
  > There's no registry, no way to see what actions are available. Damn! Was hoping such a thing existed. Or, ideally, to be able to query apps for their linkable functionality. The end goal is for any action within any app to be reducible to a single tap. I'm still new to Android so perhaps this is all doable and I just need to figure it out.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    On Android, you can inspect what activities are available, and invoke them directly. It's not a part of the standard installation but tools are easily available. This way, you can create shortcuts to get to most activities in one tap. With more complex automation software, you can even run them in a chain, or conditionally. It's the closest thing to URLs I've seen on a major platform. AFIACT most desktop software, built using whatever tools, is not structured this way, and cannot be easily converted.
southerntofu 5y ago
It would be pretty cool to have more standard URI schemes to automate tasks :)
elric 5y ago
It's what made the web. Literally and figuratively. As in, it made the web the web, and it made the web popular. Sadly, these days many web sites are single page JS monsters which break linking/bookmarks/opening-in-new-tab and everything we took for granted.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  That and the endless link rot.

rektide 5y ago

Google has been driving actual URLs into apps, via the creation of Web Share API and Web Share Target API. One doesn't need a subsystem within the operating system, when the internet already does the job. For reference, here's app-talk describing their core capability: > The goal of the x-callback-url specification is to provide a standardized means for iOS developers to expose and document the methods they make available to other apps. Using x-callback-url’s source apps can launch other apps passing data and context information, and also provide parameters instructing the target app to return data and control back to the source app after executing an action. I do love this idea of showing what capabilities are afforded. This is a little different to me than the Ubiquotous Linking, which reads more to me about exposing data, rather than capabilities. I think both are important!!! Android Apps have intents, but AFAIK it's kind of a barren wasteland of interoperability. There's no registry, no way to see what actions are available. One kind of just has some intents they listen for, and fires off intents they know how to issue. There's no rendezvous, no finding out what one might do. I could be mistaken. But it feels enormously fantastically tightly coupled. And App-Talk seems aimed to make a bit more ad-hoc connections possible. Web Share/Web Share Target do fill this gap nicely, but it is weird that Android in general doesn't seem to have much here.

iansinnott 5y ago
> There's no registry, no way to see what actions are available. Damn! Was hoping such a thing existed. Or, ideally, to be able to query apps for their linkable functionality. The end goal is for any action within any app to be reducible to a single tap. I'm still new to Android so perhaps this is all doable and I just need to figure it out.
- nine_k 5y ago
  On Android, you can inspect what activities are available, and invoke them directly. It's not a part of the standard installation but tools are easily available. This way, you can create shortcuts to get to most activities in one tap. With more complex automation software, you can even run them in a chain, or conditionally. It's the closest thing to URLs I've seen on a major platform. AFIACT most desktop software, built using whatever tools, is not structured this way, and cannot be easily converted.

southerntofu 5y ago

It would be pretty cool to have more standard URI schemes to automate tasks :)

elric 5y ago

It's what made the web. Literally and figuratively. As in, it made the web the web, and it made the web popular. Sadly, these days many web sites are single page JS monsters which break linking/bookmarks/opening-in-new-tab and everything we took for granted.

yencabulator 5y ago
That and the endless link rot.