The promise of web-to-app linking is that a developer can associate an app with a website. That way when you load the website the app will launch. Really cool!
However, the sad truth of the matter is that you have to do a Windows Key + R to Run the website. Normally I, and I assume most people, go to their browser to view websites. There’s simply no point in running the web page. It would be just as easy using a protocol like vudu: to launch the app from this Run dialog.
There is a note in the blog post that reads:
I’m on the Fall Creators Update now and I’m not seeing this behavior. Was this a feature that was dropped? Could someone update the blog post?
Getting to the point where all of this works was fairly simple. Add an extension to the app manifest. Then add a JSON file to the well-known folder on the website. Finally tweak the OnActivated method of the app to handle whatever URL comes our way. It’s all straight forward and spelled out in the documentation .
I just don’t see the point of this when we have Protocol handlers already. What do you think?
