Web Intents

Web Intents was an experimental 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

Client
  • 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]

Server
  • There are some Web Intents proxy pages that make available some real services that don't yet support intents.[6]
  • AddThis supports Web Intents by their sharing tools regardless of browser support.[7]

History

Paul Kinlan of Google announced the Web Intents project in December 2010. He soon released a prototype API to GitHub. In August 2011 Google announced that Chrome would support Web Intents. Google and Mozilla have started co-operating to unify Web Intents and Mozilla's Web Activities (which tries to solve the same problem) into one proposal.[8][9][10]

In November 2012, Greg Billock of Google announced that experimental support of Web Intents had been removed from Chrome.[4]

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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