7 ms·

Intent Tag Has Landed In Webkit

99 points by kinlan 14y ago

VMG 14y ago
more info: http://webintents.org/ http://webintents.org/ 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 14y 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.
- marcusf 14y ago
  Not sure why the Apple punch was necessary? You do see that this is a commit on WebKit, right?
  - exit 14y ago
    at some point powerful webapps disrupt the app store market
    - marcusf 14y ago
      I'm missing the conclusion to that sentence. During 2011, the app store generated $3.4bn in revenue. Given Apples 30% cut, they'd see about $1bn revenue there, out of a total revenue of $108bn in fiscal 2011 [2]. That makes the app store about ~0.95% of Apples total revenue, compared to iPhone hardware sales, generating $47bn or 43% of Apples total revenue [3]. Now, you might argue that the app store accounts for some percent in that in that people buy iPhones to be able to play Angry Birds and whatnot, but from what I can tell, the most popular apps on iPhone are equally available on Android [4]. Pair this with the fact that iOS Safari seems to be the most capable mobile browser out there (or at the very least, in the top 2) [5] and I'm saying there's no published reason Apple would fight web intents or more powerful web apps in general. Of course, I'm open to other interpretations. [1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-android/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-andro... [2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Four... [3] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1856667914x0xS1193125-11-282113/320193/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1856667914x0xS11... [4] http://www.pcworld.com/article/226531/apples_popular_apps_not_exclusive_to_iphone_analysis.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/226531/apples_popular_apps_no... [5] http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/ http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/
      - bergie 14y ago
        There are two big obstacles I see for web apps to take over: * Poor interoperability between apps (solved by WebIntents) * Monetization (though services like GitHub and Flickr do this well, and there are providers like http://chargify.com/ http://chargify.com/ to make it easy for developers)
      - smackfu 14y ago
        App store apps give Apple lock-in to the iOS platform. Even if an app is available for Android, I would need to buy it again, which means I have friction to switch platforms. If everything is a web app, I can switch at will.
      - ajross 14y ago
        It's not the app revenue, it's the locked content stream. Open web apps would be able to sell content directly, as they never signed the app store contract. Long term Apple's growth model requires content sales. Hardware sales only grew 7% over last year if I remember their filing correctly.
        marcusf 14y ago
        Actually I think you're about a factor 10 off there, hardware sales FY11 was $99bn, compared to $57bn in FY10, which is a growth year over year of about 72%, while content saw growth of about 28% from $4.9bn to $6.3bn. As for total impact on revenue, hardware sales made up 91% of total revenue in '11, compared to 88% in '10.
  - jahmed 14y ago
    Well they still haven't enabled HTML form file upload which makes uploading through a web app difficult if not impossible.
    - marcusf 14y ago
      This discussion isn't wholly centered on mobile though - the OP mentions Mozzila, Msft, Google and Apple - I think we're equally talking desktop browsers. And while I agree that file upload is a major, glaring omission and a constant source of pain, I still hope it's not permanent.
      - jahmed 14y ago
        The difference between desktop and mobile is arbitrary. A cell phone is a very small computer that also has specialized hardware for making phone calls (which my laptop also has). Yes there may be some considerations for space and workflow on different devices but RFC 1867 has been around for almost 20 years. Its not something new and revolutionary, its something that most people expect to do from within a browser.
casca 14y 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.
- kinlan 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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.
- kinlan 14y ago
  This is one of the use-cases I am pushing.
- robmcm 14y 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.
- MatthewPhillips 14y 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.
  - kinlan 14y 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.
    - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
      Defaulting is not enough. It has to be easy to switch to another. On my Android phone I have 5 web browsers installed. If I add a bookmark to the homescreen it asks me which web browser I want to use to open it. Every time I click on it. I could, as you suggest, set a default, but if I do that then that browser owns all of my links and the only way to change it is to hunt down the setting to disable the default (which is buried in the settings UI I suppose). So I live with the (extreme annoyance) of clicking on a link within the browser that then prompts me which browser I'd like to use to open it. Getting the UX right on this is by far the most important part of the project.
fpp 14y ago
Similar or related initiatives: Mozilla web apps / web activities: https://people.mozilla.com/~anarayanan/webapps.html https://people.mozilla.com/~anarayanan/webapps.html http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2011/07/web-apps-update-experiments-in-web-activities-app-discovery/ http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2011/07/web-apps-update-experim... A overview of currently envisioned use cases: http://usecases.webintents.org/ http://usecases.webintents.org/ Activity base schema (IBM, SAY, Facebook, Six Apart, Google, Microsoft, MySpace): http://activitystrea.ms/head/activity-schema.html http://activitystrea.ms/head/activity-schema.html Web intents at w3c: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview.html http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview...
budgetperson 14y 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 14y 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.
Kilimanjaro 14y 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">
- Kilimanjaro 14y 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.
  - kinlan 14y 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.
    - Kilimanjaro 14y ago
      We've been doing href="mailto:self@example.com" for centuries and it has worked very well. Good point about returning data.
      - kinlan 14y ago
        we will definitely be supporting mailto etc using all the existing methods.
    - Kilimanjaro 14y ago
      Ok, how about using the message event to receive data from the app? Not only return values, imagine an app updating the browser as data changes like: <a href="wallst.com?ticker=AAPL" action="stocks" onmessage="update(event)"> Kind of server events attached to the message event of an actionable link. Everything scriptable. You know, just throwing ideas to the wall to see if something sticks.
drpancake 14y 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.html#example http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview... You'll notice that all of the editors are Googlers.
- kinlan 14y 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/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-intents/
ilaksh 14y 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/ http://www.webintents.org/
- kinlan 14y ago
  That is exactly how the shim works :)
emehrkay 14y 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.html#example http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview... What are the security concerns?

99 points by kinlan 14y ago

VMG 14y ago

more info: http://webintents.org/ http://webintents.org/ 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 14y 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.

marcusf 14y ago
Not sure why the Apple punch was necessary? You do see that this is a commit on WebKit, right?
- exit 14y ago
  at some point powerful webapps disrupt the app store market
  - marcusf 14y ago
    I'm missing the conclusion to that sentence. During 2011, the app store generated $3.4bn in revenue. Given Apples 30% cut, they'd see about $1bn revenue there, out of a total revenue of $108bn in fiscal 2011 [2]. That makes the app store about ~0.95% of Apples total revenue, compared to iPhone hardware sales, generating $47bn or 43% of Apples total revenue [3]. Now, you might argue that the app store accounts for some percent in that in that people buy iPhones to be able to play Angry Birds and whatnot, but from what I can tell, the most popular apps on iPhone are equally available on Android [4]. Pair this with the fact that iOS Safari seems to be the most capable mobile browser out there (or at the very least, in the top 2) [5] and I'm saying there's no published reason Apple would fight web intents or more powerful web apps in general. Of course, I'm open to other interpretations. [1] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-android/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/12/ios-revenues-vs-andro... [2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Four... [3] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1856667914x0xS1193125-11-282113/320193/filing.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1856667914x0xS11... [4] http://www.pcworld.com/article/226531/apples_popular_apps_not_exclusive_to_iphone_analysis.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/226531/apples_popular_apps_no... [5] http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/ http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/
    - bergie 14y ago
      There are two big obstacles I see for web apps to take over: * Poor interoperability between apps (solved by WebIntents) * Monetization (though services like GitHub and Flickr do this well, and there are providers like http://chargify.com/ http://chargify.com/ to make it easy for developers)
    - smackfu 14y ago
      App store apps give Apple lock-in to the iOS platform. Even if an app is available for Android, I would need to buy it again, which means I have friction to switch platforms. If everything is a web app, I can switch at will.
    - ajross 14y ago
      It's not the app revenue, it's the locked content stream. Open web apps would be able to sell content directly, as they never signed the app store contract. Long term Apple's growth model requires content sales. Hardware sales only grew 7% over last year if I remember their filing correctly.
      - marcusf 14y ago
        Actually I think you're about a factor 10 off there, hardware sales FY11 was $99bn, compared to $57bn in FY10, which is a growth year over year of about 72%, while content saw growth of about 28% from $4.9bn to $6.3bn. As for total impact on revenue, hardware sales made up 91% of total revenue in '11, compared to 88% in '10.
- jahmed 14y ago
  Well they still haven't enabled HTML form file upload which makes uploading through a web app difficult if not impossible.
  - marcusf 14y ago
    This discussion isn't wholly centered on mobile though - the OP mentions Mozzila, Msft, Google and Apple - I think we're equally talking desktop browsers. And while I agree that file upload is a major, glaring omission and a constant source of pain, I still hope it's not permanent.
    - jahmed 14y ago
      The difference between desktop and mobile is arbitrary. A cell phone is a very small computer that also has specialized hardware for making phone calls (which my laptop also has). Yes there may be some considerations for space and workflow on different devices but RFC 1867 has been around for almost 20 years. Its not something new and revolutionary, its something that most people expect to do from within a browser.

casca 14y 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.

kinlan 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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.

kinlan 14y ago
This is one of the use-cases I am pushing.
robmcm 14y 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.
MatthewPhillips 14y 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.
- kinlan 14y 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.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    Defaulting is not enough. It has to be easy to switch to another. On my Android phone I have 5 web browsers installed. If I add a bookmark to the homescreen it asks me which web browser I want to use to open it. Every time I click on it. I could, as you suggest, set a default, but if I do that then that browser owns all of my links and the only way to change it is to hunt down the setting to disable the default (which is buried in the settings UI I suppose). So I live with the (extreme annoyance) of clicking on a link within the browser that then prompts me which browser I'd like to use to open it. Getting the UX right on this is by far the most important part of the project.

fpp 14y ago

Similar or related initiatives: Mozilla web apps / web activities: https://people.mozilla.com/~anarayanan/webapps.html https://people.mozilla.com/~anarayanan/webapps.html http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2011/07/web-apps-update-experiments-in-web-activities-app-discovery/ http://blog.mozilla.org/labs/2011/07/web-apps-update-experim... A overview of currently envisioned use cases: http://usecases.webintents.org/ http://usecases.webintents.org/ Activity base schema (IBM, SAY, Facebook, Six Apart, Google, Microsoft, MySpace): http://activitystrea.ms/head/activity-schema.html http://activitystrea.ms/head/activity-schema.html Web intents at w3c: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview.html http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview...

budgetperson 14y 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 14y 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.

Kilimanjaro 14y 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">

Kilimanjaro 14y 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.
- kinlan 14y 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.
  - Kilimanjaro 14y ago
    We've been doing href="mailto:self@example.com" for centuries and it has worked very well. Good point about returning data.
    - kinlan 14y ago
      we will definitely be supporting mailto etc using all the existing methods.
  - Kilimanjaro 14y ago
    Ok, how about using the message event to receive data from the app? Not only return values, imagine an app updating the browser as data changes like: <a href="wallst.com?ticker=AAPL" action="stocks" onmessage="update(event)"> Kind of server events attached to the message event of an actionable link. Everything scriptable. You know, just throwing ideas to the wall to see if something sticks.

drpancake 14y 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.html#example http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview... You'll notice that all of the editors are Googlers.

kinlan 14y 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/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-intents/

ilaksh 14y 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/ http://www.webintents.org/

kinlan 14y ago
That is exactly how the shim works :)

emehrkay 14y 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.html#example http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/web-intents/raw-file/tip/spec/Overview... What are the security concerns?