Re: Internet Shortcut

On Sat, 10 May 2025 00:35:45 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote :

When you doubleclick on a Windows *.html file, it brings up the URL in
the default web browser; when you doubleclick on a *.csv file, it brings
up the document in the default Excel program; when you doubleclick on a
*.jpg file it bring it up inside the default image editor (and so on).

 
Those are all just documents, and double-clicking displays their content
in an associated application.
 
An Intent, on the other hand, is a message to do something.

I agree with you. It was just an analogy. It's not 100% the same.

We need to keep in mind that probably a lot of Android owners can't even
spell the word "Intent" (nor "Activity"), which are critical keywords for
any user to know even if he is NOT a developer - when it comes to creating
one-tap shortcuts on Android to make Android more efficient.

For example, using Muntashirakon, I can create a one-tap shortcut to any
Activity (even hidden Activities!) as long as they're exposed to Android.

That way Android can bring up any (public) page of any app in a single tap.
That's something no other common consumer operating system can do (AFAIK).

However, the concept of "Intents", as you noted, are different in that
Intents share data or trigger an action to be handled by another app.

In a way, as far as I can tell, perhaps the closest thing to an Android
Intent on Windows is the ability to share data (such as files) via the
send-to, or open-with dialog or the mail-to type intents. 

Anyway, a classic use of Android intents we recently discussed on the
Android newsgroup would be to create a folder of one-tap shortcuts
containing icons of each of your family members so that you can dial them.

Android Intents are powerful though, so that's just one simple example.