Should it really be up to the Website designer to decide?
On Firefox I have the "Send Link to Device" context action that allow me to open a link on my Phone or Desktop.
On Firefox I have the "Send Link to Device" context action that allow me to open a link on my Phone or Desktop.
A website designer then might say "share this url on click" and the browser takes over and/or defers to the OS.
Now, the share() [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...] falls short in passing along context for login (e.g. cookies) so I'd imagine that this would either be part of the browser, or something the share() api could extend on, though I'd be unconfortable about the security implications of the latter.
The share() also falls short on desktop in my experience. AFAIK, firefox (on linux?) doesn't even have the share() API available.
The browser now already registers itself as a target to share web urls. It does this already (on my mobile devices at least) as "Open URL in Firefox" for example.
It should and could also add a target to share web urls, but call it "Send to device". Firefox for Android used to have this and it was awesome. But mozilla somehow dropped it. (There was a long thread on a bug report about exactly this, but I cannot find it).
Also, when I choose that option, it'd not just send the url along, but could also send any cookies or even localstorage and other data along. That way I'd be logged in.
That last part would be part of the "send to " feature, in Firefox called "firefox sync" and possibly be configurable from there to opt out of sending session or other data along.
Point is: there's no need for extra "target=" hackery, we already have all the tech in place to send links to devices. Instead, we'd have to convince browser builders to improve this tech and the UX of it.
We use QR codes to transfer the user - a solution would need to be as simple as that (Ie. not requiring the user to be logged in on the same browser or other shenanigans).
The current solution is a hasle, but works well - I can't envision how a target="_mobile" should solve this? Especially since you need to transfer authentication also.
It is a shame that the family computer does not exists anymore - a place where you can't just assume that the same account is logged in on related devices.