Re: [W3C Webmob] Deep Linking Continues...!

On February 7, 2015 at 1:36:56 AM, Dominique Hazael-Massieux (dom@w3.org) wrote:
> On 06/02/2015 13:28, Natasha Rooney wrote:
> > If we find that the Navigation Scope covers the use cases we have then
> > we will not do any extra work, however, if it doesn’t then we will
> > create a use cases and requirements doc for this. Let the list know your
> > thoughts!
>  
> While I think Navigation Scope probably covers well the use cases for
> deep linking into Web Apps, a lot of the interest around deep linking
> concerns native apps, where obviously the manifest doesn't apply as is.
>  
> I think it would be interesting to look beyond just Web Apps, and see if
> we can help solve deep linking for native apps as well.
>  
> If we do want to make progress on that aspect too, I think my earlier
> suggestion [1] of comparing existing solutions in this space still
> stands (although I'm afraid I don't have the cycles to help with it at
> the moment).

I'm personally not in favor of doing this. My instinct is that we will just end up at "use a custom URL" - which is what everyone already does, and have been doing for years. URLs work fine as generic mechanisms for both addressing and simple passing of data. Adding a layer of structure on top of URLs would not be ideal, IMO. I would be much happier for native apps ecosystems to sort that out and evolve those structures at their own pace (as various companies already do), and when they want to interact with a web application, they simply just start their URLs with "https://" or, if need be, "http://". The same works in reverse: I want to talk to the github local app on my mac? then:

 <a href="github-mac://openRepo/https://github.com/w3c/whatever"> . 

Again, it just works.

Received on Friday, 6 February 2015 15:49:17 UTC