4 ms·

WebIntents are Links 2.0

47 points by julien 14y ago

AndrewDucker 14y ago
Any news on when Firefox is shipping support for them?
- kinlan 14y ago
  Mozilla are working on a very similar implementation at the moment in Boot2Gecko. I personally hope to see this be brought inline with Intents with feedback about what they have learnt in the process. Web Intents does have a compatibility JS shim, it needs a couple of updates to get it working in FF again after implementing Content Security policy, but after that WI should work fine (but not native).
alttab 14y ago
I might not understand the full problem this is solving. Is it to get rid of all the social bookmarking buttons on blogs? Something tells me only being supported in chrome, and having to literally download an app to share seems rather silly. Unless a large portion of the intended audience is tech-centric or cares about this thing, bloggers will now have intent plugins and social sharing plugins. So I'll state my original point- there has to be more leverage behind web intents that I'm missing? Does anyone have good links that may shed more light?
- julien 14y ago
  It's for any "application" that you use online. Intents are not limited to "share". There could be a "print", a "sponsor", a "save" intent.;. etc. Also, it will do exactly that: help bloggers get rid of all the dummy buttons ont their sites for these services who track _their_ readers, audience and make the loading slower... while still allowing everyone to chose their platform of choice :)
- kinlan 14y ago
  The bigger picture is that it is not about Sharing, it's about connecting web-apps. The goal is that users will not know about or need to know about intents, they just get the flexibility to use the services that they prefer to use in the apps and sites that they visit. For developers it is about not having to create or build native, or tightly coupled integrations to a select few services. The app just asks for a service and the browser knows the list that the user can use. The "download" or install part you mention is just for now whilst we get the intent tag and other discovery mechanisms landed. If you look at AddThis, they offer support for intents in their widget, so it is not aimed at being tech centric at all. I would also add that we are not finished yet, there is still a lot to do such as setting defaults, and building explicit intents (let the dev define the endpoint of the action) and also getting more apps to provide or integrate with services.
  - pwpwp 14y ago
    Is there a relation to registerProtocolHandler, somehow?
    - kinlan 14y ago
      short answer. Yes and there will be integration between RPH, RCH and intents.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  It's similar to when you wanna open a file, but doesn't know what app to open that file type with. The OS shows you a list of apps that can handle that file type and you can choose a default one. Except this is now handled by the browser instead of the OS. And it let's the website choose which "file type", and it's not just for files but for any links. The "file type" is what the web intent is and the app can be any webapp or browser extension. Sharing in just one of the many examples of intents. You could also have one intent for editing a picture, which would open an app for editing. Or playing a video. Adding an event to the calendar etc. You can make up your own intents, it can be virtually anything. If you used android, it works just like android intents. When an android app needs to play a video, it doesn't need to say "open app X", it just needs to say "I wanna play this video" and the OS will show the user with a list of apps which registered to be able to do that.
systemizer 14y ago
Very cool; I forgot about web intents for a while, but this is very encouraging. Who will build the extension to rule them all? Example use cases where file is at an arbitrary URL: 1. Save a file - saves file in your dropbox. 2. favorite a song - music service (i.e. soundcloud) saves to your favorites 3. get copy of code repo - forks the repo for you on a versioning system service (i.e. github) 4. register for event - adds event to your scheduling service (i.e. plancast, google calendar) What other ideas can you think of?
robmcm 14y ago
This is great, but for it to really be useful it needs wide spread support. Or a decent fallback I guess.
- kinlan 14y ago
  Fallback we have the shim. Decent Fallback? I need to fix it for FF. I am working on the eco-system now :)
readme 14y ago
The main problem I suffer from as an Android developer with intents (in Android) is that applications inconsistently implement them. For example, I can send an intent off to send an email. Then, any email application on the device that has declared itself as able to receive that intent with an <intent-filter>, can respond to it. The problem is that there is no way for the response to be standardized. Applications often give you back different results for the same intents, that lack the extras you expected, or don't respond at all. The end result is when you try to use an intent to add a cool feature to your app, you run into the problem of the user potentially having an app installed that doesn't handle it correctly, but publishes itself as able to do so. The aftermath is that the user tries to use this app, then when it doesn't work, to them it is a bug with my app. When there's really not a thing I can do about it. Does Web Intents address this issue at all?
- etherealG 14y ago
  it seems like some required data with an intent would make sense to resolve this. and firing the intent without that data is the same as not firing the intent at all?
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I've been using Android since the G1 came out. I've never experienced what you're describing and I fail to understand it. If news.yc started click-jacking Facebook/Twitter likes, I'd stop using it. If an app started broadcast bad Intent receivers, I'd stop using it. There is a fork of CM somewhere that has the ability to remove things from the Intent responder list and I think there's a root-enabled third-party app as well. There's no reason the User-Agent couldn't give you the ability to "hide" an Intent receiver from the default list of applications. (In fact I expect it) What you're describing is an application failure, not a design problem, there's literally no way to enforce the correct behavior of an application the way you're expecting.
- bookwormAT 14y ago
  this problem is new to me as well, both as a user and a developer. Usually, data that is sent between events is very simple, and if an application registeres for an event that it does not handle well, then it is mostly transparent what application has to be replaced.
AffableSpatula 14y ago
No, WebIntents are just plain Links: <intent action="http://webintents.org/share http://webintents.org/share type="image/" href="share.html" disposition="window|inline" /> <link rel="http://webintents.org/share http://webintents.org/share type="image/" href="share.html" disposition="window|inline" />

47 points by julien 14y ago

AndrewDucker 14y ago

Any news on when Firefox is shipping support for them?

kinlan 14y ago
Mozilla are working on a very similar implementation at the moment in Boot2Gecko. I personally hope to see this be brought inline with Intents with feedback about what they have learnt in the process. Web Intents does have a compatibility JS shim, it needs a couple of updates to get it working in FF again after implementing Content Security policy, but after that WI should work fine (but not native).

alttab 14y ago

I might not understand the full problem this is solving. Is it to get rid of all the social bookmarking buttons on blogs? Something tells me only being supported in chrome, and having to literally download an app to share seems rather silly. Unless a large portion of the intended audience is tech-centric or cares about this thing, bloggers will now have intent plugins and social sharing plugins. So I'll state my original point- there has to be more leverage behind web intents that I'm missing? Does anyone have good links that may shed more light?

julien 14y ago
It's for any "application" that you use online. Intents are not limited to "share". There could be a "print", a "sponsor", a "save" intent.;. etc. Also, it will do exactly that: help bloggers get rid of all the dummy buttons ont their sites for these services who track _their_ readers, audience and make the loading slower... while still allowing everyone to chose their platform of choice :)
kinlan 14y ago
The bigger picture is that it is not about Sharing, it's about connecting web-apps. The goal is that users will not know about or need to know about intents, they just get the flexibility to use the services that they prefer to use in the apps and sites that they visit. For developers it is about not having to create or build native, or tightly coupled integrations to a select few services. The app just asks for a service and the browser knows the list that the user can use. The "download" or install part you mention is just for now whilst we get the intent tag and other discovery mechanisms landed. If you look at AddThis, they offer support for intents in their widget, so it is not aimed at being tech centric at all. I would also add that we are not finished yet, there is still a lot to do such as setting defaults, and building explicit intents (let the dev define the endpoint of the action) and also getting more apps to provide or integrate with services.
- pwpwp 14y ago
  Is there a relation to registerProtocolHandler, somehow?
  - kinlan 14y ago
    short answer. Yes and there will be integration between RPH, RCH and intents.
vibrunazo 14y ago
It's similar to when you wanna open a file, but doesn't know what app to open that file type with. The OS shows you a list of apps that can handle that file type and you can choose a default one. Except this is now handled by the browser instead of the OS. And it let's the website choose which "file type", and it's not just for files but for any links. The "file type" is what the web intent is and the app can be any webapp or browser extension. Sharing in just one of the many examples of intents. You could also have one intent for editing a picture, which would open an app for editing. Or playing a video. Adding an event to the calendar etc. You can make up your own intents, it can be virtually anything. If you used android, it works just like android intents. When an android app needs to play a video, it doesn't need to say "open app X", it just needs to say "I wanna play this video" and the OS will show the user with a list of apps which registered to be able to do that.

systemizer 14y ago

Very cool; I forgot about web intents for a while, but this is very encouraging. Who will build the extension to rule them all? Example use cases where file is at an arbitrary URL: 1. Save a file - saves file in your dropbox. 2. favorite a song - music service (i.e. soundcloud) saves to your favorites 3. get copy of code repo - forks the repo for you on a versioning system service (i.e. github) 4. register for event - adds event to your scheduling service (i.e. plancast, google calendar) What other ideas can you think of?

robmcm 14y ago

This is great, but for it to really be useful it needs wide spread support. Or a decent fallback I guess.

kinlan 14y ago
Fallback we have the shim. Decent Fallback? I need to fix it for FF. I am working on the eco-system now :)

readme 14y ago

The main problem I suffer from as an Android developer with intents (in Android) is that applications inconsistently implement them. For example, I can send an intent off to send an email. Then, any email application on the device that has declared itself as able to receive that intent with an <intent-filter>, can respond to it. The problem is that there is no way for the response to be standardized. Applications often give you back different results for the same intents, that lack the extras you expected, or don't respond at all. The end result is when you try to use an intent to add a cool feature to your app, you run into the problem of the user potentially having an app installed that doesn't handle it correctly, but publishes itself as able to do so. The aftermath is that the user tries to use this app, then when it doesn't work, to them it is a bug with my app. When there's really not a thing I can do about it. Does Web Intents address this issue at all?

etherealG 14y ago
it seems like some required data with an intent would make sense to resolve this. and firing the intent without that data is the same as not firing the intent at all?
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I've been using Android since the G1 came out. I've never experienced what you're describing and I fail to understand it. If news.yc started click-jacking Facebook/Twitter likes, I'd stop using it. If an app started broadcast bad Intent receivers, I'd stop using it. There is a fork of CM somewhere that has the ability to remove things from the Intent responder list and I think there's a root-enabled third-party app as well. There's no reason the User-Agent couldn't give you the ability to "hide" an Intent receiver from the default list of applications. (In fact I expect it) What you're describing is an application failure, not a design problem, there's literally no way to enforce the correct behavior of an application the way you're expecting.
bookwormAT 14y ago
this problem is new to me as well, both as a user and a developer. Usually, data that is sent between events is very simple, and if an application registeres for an event that it does not handle well, then it is mostly transparent what application has to be replaced.

AffableSpatula 14y ago

No, WebIntents are just plain Links: <intent action="http://webintents.org/share http://webintents.org/share type="image/" href="share.html" disposition="window|inline" /> <link rel="http://webintents.org/share http://webintents.org/share type="image/" href="share.html" disposition="window|inline" />