Re: iphone urls

Am 02.10.2008 um 11:35 schrieb Alan Ruttenberg:

> The alternative in this case would be better IPC on the iphone. My  
> read is that the twitterific "scheme" isn't something one would use  
> to publish on the web. Rather it's a way to hook things on the  
> iphone so that one application can easily call a service that  
> another application publishes. The "other" application creates an  
> openURL handler, part of it's own application, which apparently  
> makes the "scheme"  globally accessible.

That is the current use there, yes. But with things like ical: and  
itunes: uri schemes in OSX already, I hold any bet that we will soon  
see app uri schemes spreading from the iPhone apps to the OSX apps.  
And then someone will build support into FF?

I think application uri schemes result from something lacking in URI  
dispatching and maybe web arch. Taking the simple "ical:" uri scheme  
on OS X, designers of web pages wanted something to say "click here  
to add this to your calendar". While that is a fair use case, the  
design with ical: uri schemes is a poor approach.

Instead imagine the web page to offer additionally "click here to  
remove this from your calendar". Clearly, neither the ical: uri  
scheme, nor the w3c endorsed content-type based dispatching can  
perform the task. Would something like

   <a href="http://example.org/event.ics" rel="calendar.add">Add this  
event to your calendar</a>
   <a href="http://example.org/event.ics"  
rel="calendar.remove">Remove this event to your calendar</a>

be desirable? Of course this needs some browser infrastructure.

The alternative approach is to embedd

   <a href="http://example.org/event.ics" type="text/calendar">An  
interesting event for you!</a>

in a page and let the user choose actions from a context menu. But  
that makes a very poor user interface.

//Stefan


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