Bye-Bye Browsers: Why Facebook's New App Links Are a Big Deal Thursday, May 1 2014
New Technologies and Technology in Business and Website Design and Winter Park Tech Assignments New Technologies, Technology in Business, Website Design, Winter Park Tech Assignments	scottm52 7:55 am
Bye-Bye Browsers: Why Facebook's New App Links Are a Big Deal
Facebook announced a slew of new programs and initiatives for developers at its F8 Conference, but the most exciting might just be App Links.
App Links are Facebook's attempt to make it easy for developers to link to other applications from their own apps. In other words, if I'm in a messenger app and I tap on a link to a photo hosted on Instagram, that link should take me directly to that image in the native Instagram app and not open up a mobile browsing window with the image.
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Right now, this type of app-to-app linking — often called mobile deep linking — exists, but the landscape is difficult for developers to navigate. Mobile deep linking works differently on different platforms. Linking to an app or a specific part of an app works one way in iOS, a different way in Android and yet another way for Windows Phone.
Facebook wants to solve this problem and its solution is App Links. App Links is open source and free for everyone to use. Right now, it supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone — but the company is open to expanding it to other platforms as it develops.