Hello. I am Paul Kinlan.

This post revisits the UX issues that contributed to the demise of Web Intents. We never adequately addressed the wide array of potential actions and data types, leading to a generic and confusing user experience. Handling data return from a long-running operation in another app proved problematic, especially if the initiating app closed. The lack of an explicit API for expecting returned data, similar to Android's startActivityForResult, further hindered the development of intuitive UI affordances. The open nature of Web Intents resulted in a proliferation of schemas and protocols, making standardization difficult. Users were forced to choose an app for every action, and developers lacked control over how apps launched, leading to inconsistent experiences. Finally, the absence of reliable fallbacks for unsupported intents eroded developer confidence and potentially left users stranded. In short, a combination of UX shortcomings ultimately led to Web Intents' downfall.

This post explores how to use Android Intents to detect if a native app is installed. This technique is useful for web apps that also have a native app version, especially for managing push notifications. It allows developers to seamlessly redirect users to the app if it's installed or fall back to the web experience. The method involves creating a special intent URL that opens the app if present, or redirects to a specific URL with a hash fragment. By monitoring the hash change in the browser, the web app can detect if the app launch failed and proceed with web-based push notification registration. While helpful, this approach highlights the complexity of managing push notifications across web and native apps, reinforcing the argument for web-only solutions.

Custom URL schemes for launching apps have limitations: single app handling, one-way data flow, lack of fallback, and limited mobile support. A better approach is needed, one that offers user choice, developer fallback, diverse data transport, web app registration, and online/offline functionality. Android's 'intent:' URL syntax offers a good starting point, abstracting service discovery and supporting fallback URLs. I propose exploring a new 'action:' scheme or 'web+action' to bridge web and native apps, providing a unified service resolution and registration system for a richer, more integrated user experience.

This story starts a long time, was tickled into existing after I visited FlipKart in Bangalore and was finalized after an internal conversation about the fact that it is impossible to trigger the share dialog in Android from the web. Lots of people want it, it turns out everyone thought it wasn't possible. It is.*

Web Developers. It's a long road ahead

You say Mobile, I say 'Mobile X'.

I've spent this week in India doing more research about Web Development in India and how mobile is changing that. Publically at least it is not rosey, app development and app thinking is very high whislt building for the web with mobile in mind is very low.