
Google Announces Plans To Bake Android-Like Web Intents Into Chrome - joelhaus
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/04/google-announces-plans-to-bake-android-like-web-intents-into-chrome/
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Udo
This is an incredibly cool idea that essentially brings back the concept of a
decentralized web. Right now, we have somehow embraced a monolithic web
culture were interop goes only in one direction - towards Facebook mainly,
closely followed by Google's conglomerate.

Web Intents will level the playing field again, and they make those horrible
embedded Facebook/Google+/whatever social networking buttons obsolete by
replacing them with something way more powerful.

~~~
fpgeek
For a concrete example of the power of Web Intents, consider this: On Android,
a browser (whether the stock or an alternative like Dolphin or Firefox) could
(and probably will given the architecture / history) offer some local Android
Intent handlers as handlers for some Web Intents.

To take the example from the blog post, at the photo storage website you could
choose to edit an image and get menu of choices that doesn't just include web
app image editors, but also includes native image editors installed on your
device. That sounds pretty amazing to me.

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ez77
Official announcement: [http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-
with-we...](http://blog.chromium.org/2011/08/connecting-web-apps-with-web-
intents.html)

~~~
beaumartinez
Project web page: <http://webintents.org/>

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nivertech
I think custom URL schemes like: mailto:, tel:, sms:, twitter: are kinda like
lightweight intents.

[http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/iPh...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Articles/PhoneLinks.html)

~~~
fpgeek
On the raising side, you're absolutely right. A custom URL scheme generally
captures what you want to do (i.e. the intent) not how.

On the handling side, however, on iOS there are limitations that I think make
them qualitatively different:

\- only one application can handle any given URL scheme

\- no mechanism (other than Apple apps win) for choosing between apps that
want to handle a URL scheme

\- no notion of optionally handling a URL scheme based on its contents (which
enables very useful filter-like behavior)

\- no notion of "returning" to whatever raised the request (there are schemes
to hack around this, but they are limited and brittle)

\- built-in support for carrying general payloads (rather than having to
encode them in a URL)

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skrebbel
Aren't we all supposed to scream "non standard!!" like we did when IE added
behaviors?

~~~
Andrex
If you were smart when IE started adding features, you would analyze the
feature in question before throwing your hands up and shouting about MS. For
instance, XMLHttpRequest was a fricking cool innovation.

MS's problem traditionally has been that it doesn't open the spec for these
sorts of things until much later, if at all. This is a tendency Google does
not really share when it adds features to Chrome. For instance, before Google
officially started working on Web Intents, an employee of theirs and one from
Mozilla came up with different ideas for how intents should be handled. They
agreed on a preliminary spec and now that spec is open for anyone to
implement.

~~~
nkassis
That's exactly it. If we complained about every new feature we'd still be
using static pages with blink tags. Google and Firefox are teaming up to
implement this features. Look at how Google went about WebGL. They had a
competing plugin called O3D but when they saw O3D was working out they dropped
it completely and even ported the O3D api to WebGL (which I use now since
then). Microsoft of old would just have kept going (hence DirectX instead of
continuing to support OpenGL).

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cageface
How well have intents actually worked out in practice on Android? It's been
awhile since I spent much time with an Android device but a year or so ago it
was very rare that I really wanted a generic utility.

~~~
JonWood
They're all over the place for core functions - whenever you click a "Share"
button it will ask which applications can handle the content you want to share
and add them to the menu. I've also been prompted to choose whether I want to
make phone calls using the built in dialer or Skype, which I presume is using
intents as well.

Where I've not see so much use is providing completely new intents, presumably
because its so hard to get any sort of agreement on how they should be
implemented.

~~~
scopendo
Whilst that might be cool technology, I wonder at the user experience and
confusion when my mum clicks on the phone icon and all of a sudden this menu
appears asking me whether I want to use the phone or skype (obviously I get
that the call can be done with either, but mum probably doesn't).

~~~
MatthewPhillips
If your mother doesn't have skype installed she wouldn't get this message. If
she does, I would presume she knows what skype is for.

Additionally for the big system-level intents there is an "always use this
action" which is useful so you don't have to repeatedly tell it to use the
phone app to place phone calls.

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bni
I want Google Chrome in Android, not the other way around.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
If Chrome was a proper part of Android; it'd lose one of it's primary
strengths, namely seamless automatic updating. Android's constrained by the
certification process of carriers, and thus can't move nearly as fast as
Chrome can on it's own. Seems like a small thing, but attaching the Chrome
name to a browser that can't quite match the real thing would drag down
desktop Chrome's reputation.

A more cynical attitude could be that Chrome intends to be it's own platform
(see Chrome OS), and the Android team doesn't want to wake up one day and end
up as nothing more than the gory bits between Chrome and the hardware (as
Windows already is is for some people).

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Autoupdating is not possible on any mobile OS I'm aware of, for security
reasons. What should happen is Google (and Apple and Microsoft, etc.) need to
implement autoupdating at the OS level. With user permission, of course.

And I mean true, silent autoupdating. When a developer publishes a new version
of the app it should download the package, then apply the update the next time
that application is closed.

As for your cynical observation, I doubt there is any conspiratorial reason
for this. I think it has more to do with Android operating more or less like
an independent startup inside Google. I think the Android browser would be
much better if the Chrome team was behind it.

~~~
jellicle
Android apps have an "allow automatic update" checkbox. If the box is checked,
and the new version of the application has the same permissions as the old
one, the application auto-updates.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Explain further. I have an Android phone and I don't believe this to be the
case (I see updates in the app all the time).

Silent auto-update = No user interaction necessary at all. No notification.

~~~
joelhaus
There is notification (and AFAICT, no way to turn it off in the Froyo version
on the original Moto Droid), but otherwise, jellicle is correct. Just check
the box on the Android Market App page to allow autoupdating.

Would be interested to learn what the "security reasons" are that you
referenced above; did you mean the underlying OS? I've always felt that by
Appifying more of the core Android OS functions, Google could deliver more
timely updates because they would be able to avoid many of the carrier
restrictions and awful modifications made by manufacturers (e.g. just include
the keyboard as an app that gets shipped with the core OS).

[UPDATE:] Can't reply to georgemcbay, but he stated:

> " _this can be disabled_ "

I've had this set in the market app as you described for a while, but still
get notifications when an app has autoupdated. Did I miss something?

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joeshaw
I like the idea, but is anyone else worried about the user interface? I don't
like the thought of any site I happen to drive by registering their ability to
handle intents. When it does become time for me to edit a photo, I don't want
50 choices popping up, nearly none of which I remember. And, it seems rife
with phishing opportunities.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. I also don't want to be asked every time
a site wants to register an intent. If you just make it opt-in, it seems like
most users will simply miss the opportunity to do so.

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RexRollman
In my opinion, feature creep is starting to bloat Chrome.

