14 DAY TRIAL // Google has revealed an interesting project from its Chrome team, Web Intents a tool which is designed to make it easy for web applications to talk to each other and 'collaborate' through standard means.
The idea is to make it easy for an app to add non-core functionality, for example a way to share something on popular social networks, by leveraging another app, without the two having to know anything about each other.
There is a very similar mechanism in Android, which Google lists as an example and inspiration, dubbed Intents, which does exactly the same thing.
The next time you snap a picture in a photo sharing app via the built-in camera app in Android, Intents is working behind the scenes.
"This web platform API will provide the same benefits of Android Intents, but better suited for web applications," Google writes.
The main aim of Web Intents is simplicity, since developers would be using this in order to save time and bypass the need to reinvent the wheel, the API itself has to be simple.
Google wants developers to be able to add a Web Intent to their app with as little as two lines of code. That said the API is still in the early days.
"Web Intents documents an initial set of intent actions (edit, view, share, etc.) that likely cover the majority of use cases on the web today; however, as the web grows and sites provide more functionality, new intent actions will be added," Google explained.
"To foster development and use of intents, we plan to create a site to browse existing intents and add new intents," it added.
If all of this is beginning to sound familiar, it's because this is not the first time you've heard of it, Mozilla is working on the very same thing.
In fact, the two companies have joined forces, since both started pursuing the same problem, and will develop a standard API.
"Mozilla is also actively exploring this problem space. In fact we’re working closely with Mozilla engineers to unify our two proposals into one simple, useful API," Google explained.