App Links: Link Anywhere on Mobile

Hooray, now it can join URX[1] and DeepLink[2] in this &quot;making links actually do things&quot; space. Of course, being the free, open source option I do hope this prevails, but it amazes me the lengths we&#x27;ve had to go (URX even raised $12m) in trying to get the iPhone to do what Android has been able to do for years. Parsing URLs really shouldn&#x27;t be this difficult.<p>[1] <a href="http://urx.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;urx.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.deeplink.me/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deeplink.me&#x2F;</a>

&quot;mobile&quot; being iPhone? Because android apps can handle their own (http[s]) urls just fine.

Can anyone explain how this differs (if at all) from the deep linking support built into Android? <a href="http://developer.android.com/training/app-indexing/deep-linking.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.android.com&#x2F;training&#x2F;app-indexing&#x2F;deep-link...</a>

Can someone explain how and why I would truly want to link out to another app on someone&#x27;s phone? I get the whole android intents thing and having a &quot;share&quot; button and letting other services handle some of those things, but in what cases is it super beneficial to link to another app and leave your app?<p>The only thing I can think of are things like PDF viewers or maybe cross linking your own apps?

From one perspective this looks killer: It looks like it supports a long-time pain of being able to direct someone to download an app and then open a specific location within the app. You could now have a QR code that when scanned from a shop didn&#x27;t just download the right app for the phone, but the applink would also describe what to open once the app is installed.<p>But from another perspective this looks like a nightmare: It entrenches apps as the universal interface, and not the browser, by keeping people within the world of apps.<p>I can see why advertising companies want this, the browser is a battleground for control of the presentation layer (adverts) and apps help protect that (by locking out adblock add-ons, etc).

This is good. I&#x27;m left wondering about a couple of thing.<p>- Would a parallel standard be useful that allows the rel=&quot;&quot; and type=&quot;&quot; attributes of &lt;a&gt; to signal the kind of app (for mobile and desktop) that could better handle the resource than the browser? I&#x27;ve been enamored with this idea of general cross-linking between browsers and native apps for quite a while, but it seems like a pipe dream.<p>- Is it even possible to have general data types that multiple apps can handle (and what would the selection UI look like for that)? Think lat&#x2F;long for mapping apps, addresses (for a variety of apps), events (time&#x2F;data&#x2F;address), etc.<p>I should add that the referring app UI for iOS is clever, great job whoever thought of that.

Didn&#x27;t 2 other companies just raise millions to do this?

How does this work in the case of namespace collision? Will we have squatters on the uri schemes?

Here&#x27;s a link to Facebook&#x27;s blog post: <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/04/30/app-links/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.facebook.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;post&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;30&#x2F;app-lin...</a>

I want to see the App Links for the apps in their service, the Pinterest and Spotify links would be nice to have access too. Pinterest is notorious for being closed off, only recently opening open an API. Will the list be open?

One problem I&#x27;d like to see solved across platforms is the case when you click an app deep-link for an app you don&#x27;t have installed. Currently we&#x27;re having to do some crazy hacks so that a single link goes to the relevant app store if the app is not installed, or opens the intended app if it is. Solutions for iOS and Android are also currently quite different, and it&#x27;s a PITA. Do AppLinks solve this problem?