Re: Making Web Apps first class citizen

On 11/03/2013 13:31 , Tobie Langel wrote:
> On Monday, March 11, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Robin Berjon wrote:
>> So, a big part of the issue you're seeing there is that you're
>> using iOS. I don't mean this as a jab, it really is an
>> architectural weakness. The flow you describe is far more sensible
>> on any platform that has something like intents and URL
>> interception.
>
> Fair enough. Will consider using an Android as primary device for a
> little while.

Android has its quirks elsewhere, but the intents architecture is 
extremely powerful, and more to the point it is very much web friendly. 
I forget who it was that told me that intents were REST taken one step 
further but it really makes sense.

>> You need more than shared cookie jars for this. You want links to
>> a given origin to be interceptable by an installed application from
>> that origin.
>
> Sure. The App controller in Alex Russell's AppCache proposal would
> fill in that role quite nicely, don't you think?

Actually, I'm not sure that that works here because it's not 
system-wide. It would also intercept things in the wrong way (e.g. you 
do *not* want <img src='http://flickr.com/...'> intercepted from a page.

Look at the simple example at:

 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1609573/intercepting-links-from-the-browser-to-open-my-android-app

The idea here applies to the case that you described in which you 
receive a link to something on Facebook in email, and then jump through 
hoops only to find out that it's a Twitter link, etc.

Based on the above example, any application you have that understands 
how Flickr's URLs work can list itself as a handler for VIEW 
http://flickr.com/photos/whatever. And apps in which there are links 
(such as your email client) would trigger VIEW $url when the link is 
clicked.

This is a powerful and modular approach. It notably means that in your 
case, clicking on the Facebook link in the email would have opened the 
Facebook app, and then clicking on the Twitter link there would have 
opened your Twitter client.

>> We have simple solutions that are superior, and we should use
>> them.
>
> Are we expecting these solutions to gain significant traction within
> a reasonable timeframe? Are we doing anything to help with this?

Well, we're having this conversation aren't we? ;-)

I think there are two technologies that sorely need more standardising 
energy behind them:

• Web Intents, which is still stalled on implementers figuring out some 
UI stuff (but I'm not getting the impression that they're working that 
much on this).

• BrowserID (or something like it). Identity is a core component in 
apps, and everyone reimplements it every time. The ability to share it 
at the system level is even more appealing. This is currently in no 
group, but I think it should be.

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Monday, 11 March 2013 14:06:12 UTC