[whatwg] Proposal: <intent> tag for Web Intents API

Tue Dec 6 13:14:04 PST 2011

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 1:08 PM, James Graham <jgraham at opera.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2011, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>
>> Especially changing the way <head> is parsed is hairy. Every new element
>> we introduce there will cause a <body> to be implied before it in down-level
>> clients. That's very problematic.
>
>
> Yes, I consider adding new elements to <head> to be very very bad for this
> reason. Breaking DOM consistency between supporting and non-supporting
> browsers can cause adding an intent to cause unrelated breakage (e.g. by
> changing document.body.firstChild).

Originally we envisioned using a self-closing tag placed in head for
the intent tag; however, we're now leaning towards not using
self-closing and having the tag be placed in the body with fallback
content, e.g., to install an extension to provide similar
functionality.

<intent action="webintents.org/share">
  Click here to install our extension that implements sharing!
</intent>

What are your thoughts on this route?

James