Intent Tag Has Landed In Webkit

http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/116384

by kinlan • 14 years ago

99 55 14 years ago

trac.webkit.org

VMG• 14 years ago

Web Intents is a framework for client-side service discovery and inter-application communication. Services register their intention to be able to handle an action on the user's behalf.

SquareWheel• 14 years ago

I really want Web Intents to take off. It's like assigning programs to certain file extensions, but instead assigning intents to web services. So you could take a photo, edit the image, and share it to your social network of choice. The websites would use a common API, they don't need to program exceptions for each-other like we do with iOS apps. Android does it a lot better, but this could really work on the web.

Hopefully Google and Mozilla will put enough resources behind this that it becomes standardized on, and maybe even Microsoft will get on board.

Apple, well, probably not.

marcusf4• 14 years ago

Not sure why the Apple punch was necessary? You do see that this is a commit on WebKit, right?

exit• 14 years ago

at some point powerful webapps disrupt the app store market

jahmed2• 14 years ago

Well they still haven't enabled HTML form file upload which makes uploading through a web app difficult if not impossible.

casca• 14 years ago

This could be a good push for interoperability, but it is more likely to end up being another vector for inadvertent data disclosure as the majority of people just click "Yes" when asked for permission.

kinlan9• 14 years ago

At the moment there is a specific prompt for the user to choose the app that they want to use when an action is invoked.

joshsharp• 14 years ago

This is not a background process but a way for a user to actively share data between web apps - it's a "push" action the user must instigate, not a "pull" from the third-party wanting access to the data. There is no more "inadvertent data disclosure" than when someone knowingly tweets a link to a file in their public dropbox, or uploads an image to Facebook.

jmitcheson• 14 years ago

The combinations of web intents and Google's GDrive implementation / Dropbox seem interesting. I could link a file with a web intent, you use your Chrome App or similar to edit it, save it back to your Dropbox / drive - then your editor makes you another link which you can share with others to start the process over again.

When you think about it this seems to align well with the original philosophies of the web. Exciting times.

kinlan9• 14 years ago

This is one of the use-cases I am pushing.

robmcm• 14 years ago

The key is that it decouples the services, we won't have to wait for service x to implement the api of service y. Instead you just say implement this intent and then boom you can use any service that supports that intent.

This is huge for web apps, and is a huge blow for local file system fans.

MatthewPhillips4• 14 years ago

So what if I have 5 apps that can edit the file type. Do I have to choose which app I want to use, every time? That is the way it works on Android, and it is bad UX.

kinlan9• 14 years ago

It depends. The UI in Chrome doesn't yet have a defaulting mechanism, but the intention is to have this so that you can set your preferred app to use and have it work seamlessly.

nym• 14 years ago

It's so much worse in iOS- to share a picture on Facebook you need to close the camera, open up FB, then find the file and upload it.

After switching from Android to an iPhone, I miss the powerful User Experience that Android provides.

fpp• 14 years ago

Similar or related initiatives:

Mozilla web apps / web activities: https://people.mozilla.com/~anarayanan/webapps.html

http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2011/07/web-apps-update-experim...

A overview of currently envisioned use cases: http://usecases.webintents.org/

Activity base schema (IBM, SAY, Facebook, Six Apart, Google, Microsoft, MySpace): http://activitystrea.ms/head/activity-schema.html

Web intents at w3c: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview...

budgetperson• 14 years ago

How are web intents different from the Semantic Web? The only differences in ideology I can find right now is the prevalence of actions over data. But still, to what degree are these concepts similar?

andybak• 14 years ago

I might be dim but I fail to see any connection at all.

One is about metadata and machine readability whilst the other is about linking web app capabilities.

Kilimanjaro4• 14 years ago

Hmm, why not just add an action attribute to the anchor tag?

    <a href="image.png" action="edit">
    <a href="myblog.feed" action="subscribe">
    <a href="rickroll.vid" action="view" target="_blank">

Kilimanjaro4• 14 years ago

Or just make it easier for the user to register protocols in the browser like:

    <a href="edit:mycat.png">
    <a href="subscribe:myblog.feed">
    <a href="view:rickroll.vid" target="_blank">

Browser vendors get together and implement some basic protocols and a simple UI to change them.

kinlan9• 14 years ago

Because protocols are not actions and also what your describe provides no way for return data to be handled. Likewise for pulling in data in to your app.

Note though that this is something we also considering, we will be bringing in RPH and RCH into the intent declaration.

The intent tag is about the declaration of abilities that your app has so in your model this would also be possible.

drpancake• 14 years ago

Interesting that the JavaScript interface is very similar to Android's own intents. From the example in the spec:

  var intent = new Intent("http://webintents.org/edit",
                          "text/uri-list;type=image/jpeg",
                          getImageDataURI(...));
  navigator.startActivity(intent, imageEdited);

http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview...

You'll notice that all of the editors are Googlers.

kinlan9• 14 years ago

There is also a lot of active contribution from a lot of other people and companies too on the list http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-intents/

ilaksh• 14 years ago

This reminds me a little of OLE (but for the web). Not the same thing but a few similarities.

Seems like something you could probably already do with like an iframe and postMessage. There is a JavaScript based implementation, maybe that's how they do it.

http://www.webintents.org/

kinlan9• 14 years ago

That is exactly how the shim works :)

emehrkay• 14 years ago

Great explanation here for those of us who didnt quite understand at first

http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview...

What are the security concerns?

Intent Tag Has Landed In Webkit

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