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Tag: Web Intents

  • Google Chrome Gets Experimental Web Intents API

    Google launched the lastest stable release of Chrome yesterday. The big update was the addition of tab syncing across all platforms using a Google ID that’s signed into Chrome. There was another update, however, that is much more valuable to developers.

    Announced last year, Google’s Web Intents project is now available in the stable release of Chrome. As was explained last year, Web Intents is a joint project between Google and Mozilla to create a single API that unifies Web apps allowing them to cooperate with each other. Mozilla pushed out their version of the API last year, but Google has only just now pushed out Web Intents to the general public.

    It’s important to note that the new version of the Web Intents API is by no means stable. It’s still very much experimental. Making Web apps work with each other takes a lot of work and the new API is no doubt going to cause a lot of bugs and crashes. That’s the point of an experimental release though. It’s better that Google gets more data from regular developers and users than just data from their own internal sources.

    There are two main features that the Web Intents API offers to developers. It’s all about getting the basic functionality out first and seeing what works. The two main selling points for the API are:

    Developers who build client apps will be able to easily include functionality from other web services (e.g., photo editing).

    Developers creating those services will no longer need to invest time and resources to negotiate and build hardcoded integrations – they can just focus on offering a great quality product with the integration facilitated by the API.

    This is only the beginning. Google has high hopes for the Web Intents API, but realizes that it’s just a baby at the moment. They fully expect the API to evolve in potentially “backwards-incompatible ways.” To help facilitate the experimental API, the current version is prefixed and only allows applications to be integrated from the Chrome Web Store. This restriction will be removed once the API becomes stable.

    It’s super exciting to see Web Intents finally available. It’s a brave new world of interoperability within the Web. When apps start working together to provide superior services in a single app, it’s going to be a better world and Web.

    If you want to start experimenting with Web Intents, check out Google’s guide on the new API. It has everything you need to get started on developing the new wave of Web apps.

  • Web Apps to Get More Useful

    Web Apps to Get More Useful

    Google announced via the Chromium blog that it is working on the Web Intents framework, which will essentially manifest itself as an API that will allow web apps to communicate with one another, similar to how Android apps can.

    The company is working with Mozilla to unify this along with a similar project it is working on. The goal is to create a single API. Mozilla released the OpenWebApps add-on for Firefox about a month ago. It’s all about linking apps together.

    “For example, if you use Flickr to share photos, then the Flickr Web App should let you easily share and integrate your Flickr photos with other Web Apps,” said Ben Adida, Tech Lead for Identity at Mozilla. “If you use Twitter to share links with your friends, then other Web Apps should allow you to easily share via Twitter.”

    The Web Intents, which Google speaks of, is described as 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,” explains WebIntents.org. “Applications request to start an Action of a certain verb (share, edit, view, pick etc) and the system will find the appropriate Services for the user to use based on the user’s preference.”

    Google software engineer James Hawkins explains, “In today’s browser ecosystem, web apps are completely disconnected or require the use of complicated APIs in order to make use of a third-party service, e.g., posting a comment to Twitter from your custom publishing domain. What if we could give sites the ability to leverage these services without any knowledge of the chosen service, except that it provides some set of predefined functionality?”

    “Android OS addresses this problem with Intents, a facility for late run-time binding between components in the same or different applications,” he continues. “In the Intents system, the client application requests a generic action, e.g. share, and specifies the data to pass to the selected service application. The user is given a list of applications which have registered that they can handle the requested intent. The user-selected application is created in a new context and passed the data sent from the client, the format of which is predefined for each specific intent type.”

    He says the API will provide the same benefits of Android Intents, but better suited for web apps. Suffice it to say that web apps should be getting more interesting and useful.

    This should help Google’s Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS.