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Web Intents

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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, modelled 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 versions 18 to 23 natively supported Web Intents.[3] This support was disabled in version 24, citing the existence of a "number of areas for development in both the API and specific user experience in Chrome"[4]. There is a JavaScript shim with support for IE 8, IE 9, Opera, Safari, Firefox 3+ and Chrome 3+.[5]

There are some Web Intents proxy pages that make available some real services that don't yet support intents.[6]

AddThis announced on May 1, 2012 that it will support Web Intents in three ways:

  1. their sharing tools will be able to invoke Web Intents,
  2. they will make Web Intents work even if the browser doesn’t support them,
  3. AddThis sharing tools will be able to handle sharing actions.[7]

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.[8][9][10]

References

  1. ^ GitHub: Paul Kinlan: WebIntents
  2. ^ TechCrunch: Google Announces Plans To Bake Android-Like Web Intents Into Chrome
  3. ^ Chrome 18 Web Intents support
  4. ^ Status of web intents in Chrome
  5. ^ Web Intents FAQ
  6. ^ Codebits: Web Intents Proxies
  7. ^ AddThis blog: A Step for Open Sharing: AddThis Integrates Web Intents
  8. ^ Chromium Blog: Connecting Web Apps with Web Intents
  9. ^ TechCrunch: Mozilla Labs Launches 'Web Activities' Experiment, Lets Web Apps Talk To Each Other
  10. ^ Mozilla Labs: Web Apps Update – experiments in Web Activities, App Discovery
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