Document in app URL sharing in MacOS

[marcoscaceres]

[ernesto-jimenez]

This also goes the other way around.

e.g: Citymapper has Send to Phone buttons in their web app to send the location to their native app. See: https://citymapper.com/go/hq

They also have a JS widget which includes the "Send to phone" button.

[marcoscaceres]

Any idea what data they are sending (if any)? Or are they just using a native app URL?:

cittymapper://whatever...

[ernesto-jimenez]

@marcoscaceres in this case they are probably just updating your citymaper profile and maybe sending a push notification.

The interesting thing is that this is based in regular URLs like https://citymapper.com/go/hq that open the webapp in desktop and the app in mobile if available.

In the same page apart from "Send to phone" they've got buttons to share the URL via email, twitter and facebook.

[marcoscaceres]

[marcoscaceres]

When sharing with Twitter on MacOS maps, it gives you the option to share with both Web applications and native applications.

Facebook

When sharing to Facebook, MacOS provides the same composing window as for twitter, but includes the ability to select who the post can be shared with. The con also provides the ability include location.

On Facebook, the post appears as follows:

Twitter

To share on Twitter, MacOS composes a small window which allows the user to enter their tweet, but also provide the ability to include location information.

The URL for the map is not actually included explicitly in the window, but rather is represented by an image of the map. This is evident in that there are only 117 characters available to the user, instead of the usual 140.

Once the user sends the tweet, the tweet and the link to Apple's mapping service gets sent to Twitter. When other users follow the link, they are then redirected to a custom protocol "maps://apple.maps.com/...". Each browser handles these URL differently. Firefox and Chrome prompt the user to launch a registered application ("external protocol request").

Chrome:

Firefox:

Discussion points:

• MacOS knows to limit Twitter's posts to 140 character, while Facebook's posts are basically unlimited in length.
• MacOS sharing does not make a distinction between native applications and web applications.
• Integration with Twitter's capability to support the inclusion of location as part of a tweet.
• Protocol handlers in browser are not very user friendly. The language used in the pop-us quite technical.

[ernesto-jimenez]

@marcoscaceres an interesting iOS example might be Tweetbot.

Then you long-press a link or click the share button in the in-app browser they open the system's share sheet which includes 3rd party apps.

[marcoscaceres]

Interesting, can you drop in a few screenshots in a new issue? 

On October 23, 2014 at 3:22:19 PM, Ernesto Jiménez (notifications@github.com) wrote:

@marcoscaceres an interesting iOS example might be Tweetbot.

Then you long-press a link or click the share button in the in-app browser they open the
system's share sheet which includes 3rd party apps.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#4 (comment)

[ernesto-jimenez]

For reference, it's issue #15