Web Intents
Web Intents is an upcoming framework for web-based inter-application communication and service discovery.
Web Intents consists of a discovery mechanism and a very light-weight RPC system between web applications, modeled after the Intents system in Android. In the context of the framework an Intent equals an action to be performed by a provider.[1] Web Intents allow two web applications to communicate with each other, without either of them having to actually know what the other one is.[2]
Support for Web Intents
Google Chrome 18+ natively supports Web Intents.[3] There is a Javascript shim with support for IE8, IE9, Opera, Safari, Firefox 3+ and Chrome 3+.[4]
There are some Web Intents Proxy pages that make available some real services that don't yet support intents.[5]
AddThis announced on May 1, 2012 that it will support Web Intents in 3 ways:
- their sharing tools will be able to invoke Web Intents,
- they will make Web Intents work even if the browser doesn’t support them,
- AddThis sharing tools will be able to handle sharing actions.[6]
History
The Web Intents project was announced by Paul Kinlan from Google in December 2010. He soon released a prototype API to GitHub. In August 2011 Google announced that Chrome will support Web Intents, and they are cooperating with Mozilla to unify Web Intents and Mozilla's Web Activities/Web Discovery (which tries to solve the same problem) into one proposal.[7][8][9]
References
- ^ GitHub: Paul Kinlan: WebIntents
- ^ TechCrunch: Google Announces Plans To Bake Android-Like Web Intents Into Chrome
- ^ Chrome 18 Web Intents support
- ^ Web Intents FAQ
- ^ Codebits: Web Intents Proxies
- ^ AddThis blog: A Step for Open Sharing: AddThis Integrates Web Intents
- ^ Chromium Blog: Connecting Web Apps with Web Intents
- ^ TechCrunch: Mozilla Labs Launches 'Web Activities' Experiment, Lets Web Apps Talk To Each Other
- ^ Mozilla Labs: Web Apps Update – experiments in Web Activities, App Discovery