Hey all, Quick background: iOS has no built-in intent system like Android. That is, you cannot dispatch a generic "open a page URL" event to the system, then have the OS present the user with a list of apps that can handle the event. If you want to open another app from yours, you need to explicitly specify that app.
Since that's all we can do, that's what we're working with. On the Firefox end, we know exactly what it will look like: we'll register a firefox:// URI handler that parses and loads the query URL whenever an app launches it. To aid developers using this API, we have an in-the-works external iOS project that these third-party devs can use. Bryan-the-super-iOS-intern has made some progress on this already [1], but we don't have a solid plan for exactly what the end result should look like. One approach is to create a simple reference project with sample code that developers can copy/paste. This is also what Chrome does [2]. Another approach would be to build an actual API/SDK that developers can import into their projects like other dependencies, using Carthage or CocoaPods. This could make integration easier for users of the existing Chrome API, especially if we can find a way to hook into that API without adding any new code. It's also worth mentioning that there's an existing third-party library called IntentKit [3] that includes a number of application schemes that can be triggered by certain actions (e.g. "open in browser"). Essentially, it attempts to recreate Android's intent system. Adding ourselves to this library will make us compatible with existing projects that use it, so I've filed a bug for this once we release v1 [4]. If we promote IntentKit as the recommended method for adding browser support, our third-party project might not need to be fleshed out as much since IntentKit does that grudge work for us. Personally, I'm pushing for the IntentKit route, so I'm not as concerned with creating and maintaining an SDK with dependency manager support. I know there are other opinions, though! Thanks, Brian [1] https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios-open-in-client [2] https://github.com/GoogleChrome/OpenInChrome [3] https://github.com/intentkit/IntentKit [4] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1180953 _______________________________________________ mobile-firefox-dev mailing list mobile-firefox-dev@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mobile-firefox-dev
