Q:

Launch iOS app from sites

Can we add functionality to the mobile site to view the page in the SE iOS app? It could be through smart app banners or a link at the bottom where the download link is.

I really don't care which, but right now there's just no way to do it. 

A:

This is finally live. Here's what it looks like:

We went with our own solution rather than the regular Apple Smart App Banner for a multitude of reasons, the biggest one being the default Apple one looking really annoying. More details about how ours works:

It only shows on Q&A pages, since those are the ones we can actually open in the app. Later on when we have deeplinking support for search pages and other pages, we'll add them there too.
If you hit the × the banner goes away forever. We store this in localStorage so if you clear your browser's memory we'll lose the setting, but for most people tapping it will mean never seeing the banner again.
It only shows if you're using Safari/Chrome/Browser/etc. That means it doesn't show when you are looking at a post within another application, so if you're reading something in Alien Blue and click a link to a SE post we won't show the banner within that app's WebView.

Try it out and let me know what you think! I'm sorry it took us so freaking long to get this out the door.

A:

With help from Brian Nickel, I've made the following bookmarklet which works for iOS:

javascript:window.location=window.location.href.replace('http','se-zaphod')

To make a bookmarklet on your device, make a dummy regular bookmark and then edit it with the javascript code.
Now every time I need to view a question in the app, I choose the bookmark and it launches!
(still waiting for the link on the site though)

