Google Developing Master API — Web Intents

GeneralSecretary writes "Google is developing an API to allow web apps to easily share information with various services. Quoting: 'Android OS addresses this problem with Intents, a facility for late run-time binding between components in the same or different applications. In the Intents system, the client application requests a generic action, e.g. share, and specifies the data to pass to the selected service application. The user is given a list of applications which have registered that they can handle the requested intent. The user-selected application is created in a new context and passed the data sent from the client, the format of which is predefined for each specific intent type. We are hard at work designing an analogous system for the web: Web Intents. This web platform API will provide the same benefits of Android Intents, but better suited for web application. ... As with Android, 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 by services that document these intents, some more popular than others. To foster development and use of intents, we plan to create a site to browse existing intents and add new intents.'"

Re:API aka tie in

[aztracker1]

ROFLMAO.... Funny, I've written a handful of jQuery extensions, just to work around certain issues, and knowing about the nasty implementation details was necessary. It's generally a good idea to understand what goes on underneath. I've had several times where understanding threading, and pointers has helped even when working on improving the performance of C# based applications. Developers who don't understand under the covers make stupid choices in ignorance. I don't like working close to the metal, I'm not that good with C, assembly, C++ etc... though having at least a general understanding helps a lot in developing applications in higher level languages.

The same is very true with JavaScript, and especially with platforms like NodeJS and MongoDB gaining in popularity (yeah, I'm a fan). Not understanding that string concatenation is far slower in most cases than array joins can be a huge difference (not as much in V8, as it does a better job in compilation, but still).