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

Wed Jan 25 12:04:26 PST 2012

Sorry for the delay in replying.

Yes we are ok with it being in the body.  Having the intent tag in the
body allows us to have a strong graceful degradation story for Web
Developers and Publishers.  The <intent> tag in the body allows us to
do several nice things such as:

1.  Giving the user another way to handle the action and allowing for
custom styling of the element:
<intent action="http://webintents.org/share" ... style="background-color:red;">
  <p>Add our bookmarklet <a href="javascript:.......">Drag to bookmark
bar</a></p>
</intent>

2. We can add the script polyfil in seamlessly - conforming UA's will
ignore internal content, non-conforming UA's will treat it as an
element they should descend into and thus load the required script.
<intent ...>
  
  <script src="http://webintents.org/webintents.min.js"></script>
</intent>

3. It opens up the possibility for intent specific sub-tags - much
like <source> in <video> that we might need in the future.

P

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 2:18 PM, Adam Barth <w3c at adambarth.com> wrote:
>
> To be clear, you're ok with not being able to include the <intent>
> element in the <head>.
>
> Adam
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Paul Kinlan <paulkinlan at google.com> wrote:
> > I know James mentioned [1] that we are leaning towards having the tag
> > in the body which opens up the possibility of unsuported browsers
> > showing the content of the element.  This had some general consensus
> > [2]
> >
> > [1] http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-December/034084.html
> > [2] http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-December/034087.html
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Adam Barth <w3c at adambarth.com> wrote:
> >> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Paul Kinlan <paulkinlan at google.com> wrote:
> >>> There isn't always a href, if left out the value action should be
> >>> launched on the current page.
> >>>
> >>> We didn't want to add additional attributes to the meta tag or link
> >>> tag just for intents, this seems to open up the flood gates for future
> >>> platform features to also extend the meta syntax, the meta element
> >>> then just becomes a dumping ground.  If the answer when defining a new
> >>> declarative standardized platform feature is to just arbitrarily add
> >>> new attributes to the meta data element we will get to a point where
> >>> either  we have attributes that are used in multiple contexts or use
> >>> of basic attribute name spacing such as "intent-".
> >>>
> >>> Looking at the spec[1] it appears there would still be a relatively
> >>> large change to the html5 spec to accomodate these new attributes and
> >>> conditional parsing guidelines.
> >>>
> >>> A new tag is simple, concise and encapsulates the features and
> >>> requirements of the new platform feature and gives us scope to iterate
> >>> for future versions without stepping on the toes of the other features
> >>> that might use the meta tag.
> >>
> >> Does that mean you're not interested in declaring this information in
> >> the <head> ?
> >>
> >> Adam
> >>
> >>
> >>> [1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-meta-elemen
> >>>
> >>> P
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Anne van Kesteren <annevk at opera.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:05:37 +0100, Greg Billock <gbillock at google.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The big ergonomic sticking point there is probably the |href|
> >>>>> attribute, which we envision
> >>>>> being able to do same-origin registration. Perhaps a similar <link
> >>>>> rel="intent"> tag
> >>>>> modification would be able to do that, though. Is that what you'd
> >>>>> suggest? Do you think
> >>>>> having two tags involved would be confusing?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> If there's always an href attribute you could just go for <link> instead. I think you should go for one element and just add attributes as required. And if we want to put inside <head> that would be either <meta> or <link>.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Anne van Kesteren
> >>>> http://annevankesteren.nl/
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Paul Kinlan
> >>> Developer Advocate @ Google for Chrome and HTML5
> >>> G+: http://plus.ly/paul.kinlan
> >>> t: +447730517944
> >>> tw: @Paul_Kinlan
> >>> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulkinlan
> >>> Blog: http://paul.kinlan.me
> >>> Skype: paul.kinlan
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Paul Kinlan
> > Developer Advocate @ Google for Chrome and HTML5
> > G+: http://plus.ly/paul.kinlan
> > t: +447730517944
> > tw: @Paul_Kinlan
> > LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulkinlan
> > Blog: http://paul.kinlan.me
> > Skype: paul.kinlan

--
Paul Kinlan
Developer Advocate @ Google for Chrome and HTML5
G+: http://plus.ly/paul.kinlan
t: +447730517944
tw: @Paul_Kinlan
LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulkinlan
Blog: http://paul.kinlan.me
Skype: paul.kinlan