Re: Using webintents to enable HTML+JS plugins

On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Darin Fisher <darin@chromium.org> wrote:

> Crazy idea alert!
>
> Assuming we invent an intent to handle a mime type (the View intent), then
> I could imagine
> it opening up the possibility to not only support explicitly started
> activities to handle a
> particular mime type, but also the incidental encountering of mime types
> (<iframe>) or the
> explicit embedding of a plugin to handle a mime type (<embed>/<object>).
>
> Traditionally, browser invoke plugins to handle non-built-in mime types.
>  It seems
> WebIntents could enable HTML+JS to be used to do the same.
>

In general I like this idea, since presumably a HTML+JS+etc. "plug-in" can
be sandboxed effectively.


>  I'm sure there are plenty
> of details to work out about how an <embed> tag would magically have HTML
> content
> loaded beneath it, etc.
>

I guess this part is outside the scope of Intents.

In places the difference between Intents and plug-ins might work against
you: The multiple-provider mechanism in Intents is different to traditional
plug-ins, where there is one provider for a given MIME type. <embed> etc.
are not necessarily in response to a user action—is the thinking that
intent initiation should be in response to a user gesture?


> There's also details about how the "document data stream" would be
> surfaced to the content.
> One could imagine using Blob or some other streaming mechanism.
>

Is the idea here that the Blob is virtualized over the stream?


> Crazy idea?
>
> -Darin
>