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As a small developer, this sounds really cool, but I wonder how much incentive they can create for large sites, especially walled-garden types like facebook.

• mmahemoff 15y ago
  It depends on which side. Walled gardens will still want to be in the game, so they'll be motivated to provide actions. They might balk at pointing users to external actions, but even walled gardens can only provide a limited set of services. e.g. Facebook and Twitter don't provide services to edit/enhance photos, they could palm that off to services like Picnik in a Web Intents universe.
  • lux 15y ago
    A walled-garden like Facebook may eventually expose actions themselves, after it's clear that web intents are prevalent enough that they finally acquiesce in lieu of their own proprietary embed scripts, but I can't see them integrating willingly with a lot of external services. Sites like that tend to try to provide seamless experiences, and keep you on their web properties. I would bet Facebook would rather acquire or build a photo editor than to simply plug in a web intent and let you choose. Will be interesting to see how this plays out either way, since the idea is something developers have long wanted and this seems like a good implementation of it. Google+ is another story, and Web Intents comes from inside the giant too, so all the more reason to support it.
    • mmahemoff 15y ago
      For sure. The Open ID versus Facebook Connect experience shows the risks ahead for Web Intents - any new layer of abstraction will add extra complexity. The architects need to be sure there are enough benefits to justify it, and as little extra complexity as possible. Fortunately, there's a lot of attention being paid early on to both user experience and developer experience of web intents. And there are definitely visible benefits to users if it's presented in the right way.