Re: Using webintents to enable HTML+JS plugins

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 6:48 AM, Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com> wrote:

> On Dec 17, 2011, at 01:57 , Darin Fisher wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I come back to this today because just a few hours ago I was discussing a
> very similar problem with some friends. I very much like the idea,
> especially since it's something that could unlock a lot of innovation (the
> path to having a new format widely supported becoming much shorter).
>
> One aspect that hasn't been discussed here but that I feel is particularly
> important is system-level integration of such a feature. That is to say, if
> my browser becomes able to handle application/shiny-unicorns and render
> those when they're loaded (directly, in an iframe/object/embed, etc.) then
> it should be possible that when I double-click on a file of type
> application/shiny-unicorns on my desktop, it opens a new tab in my browser
> with the intent loaded up and ready to go.
>
> Yes, there are security issues all over. But without system integration
> this feature is a whole lot less desirable.
>
>
Agreed.
-Darin