Re: Resource-driven, standard hyperlinks

On Nov 28, 2011, at 4:53 AM, Paul Kinlan <paulkinlan@google.com> wrote:

> Hi Tony,
> 
> Thanks for joining, we have had discussions about using anchors to be
> able to initiate the intents, but not on this list so it would be good
> to document these and the use-cases.

Then let's start with a simple use-case that is already useable:  subscribing to RSS/Atom feeds.

Let's say I just found your blog and like some of the articles.  Now I want to follow (or rather subscribe to) your blog's feed using a reader app of my choice (Google Reader).

Several web browsers already add an extra button in the navigation bar when they detect certain markup that indicates a feed is available.  (The subscribe action is probably implied here as it is the common one for feeds.). Said button may present several options on how to subscribe to the available feed(s), presumably with a configurable list of services to handle the subscription process.

Often times a blog will include links to the available feeds in either a sidebar or footer.  Clicking one of the links may have one of several outcomes:

1) The feed resource itself is rendered in the browser.  Not pretty, but we can still work with it.  I will on occasion just copy the feed link and paste it into Google Readers subscribe field.  Some web based readers may give you the option of installing a "bookmarklet", which, when clicked, will take the current page's URL (here the link to a feed) and pass it into the web site such that the user can complete the subscription process.

2) In some cases a web page will appear with information about the feed and how to subscribe to it.  Think of an XML resource with an appropriate XSL style sheet.  Also picture several "NASCAR" buttons to various feed readers.  When clicked they can allow a user to subscribe to the feed (and login as needed).

3) Some users may have registered an appropriate 3rd party application with their web browser to handle content types related to feeds.  As such the 3rd party application can be invoked to handle the feed reading or subscription process.

4) There is also registerContentHandler, but I have yet to see a working demo.  The theory here is that external web sites can be registered to deal with certain content types (here a feed) when the user agent encounters them.

My theory is that most actions can be handled by one or more of the above methods, provided user agents are configured appropriately and there is an available resource that contains the intent/action, target, and any other required or desired metadata.

I think the biggest problem with this approach is getting everything setup between publishers, end users and their user agents, and services that can handle the intent/action resource.  (Maybe someone with UI/UX experience can jump in here.)

> --
> Paul Kinlan
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Received on Tuesday, 29 November 2011 01:49:47 UTC