Tech Crunch has an article about new plans for embedding new functionality into the browser. Actually both Google and Mozilla are working on putting “web intents” into their browsers.
Today, Google has announced that it’s planning to integrate Web Intents into Chrome. The news comes on the heels of Mozilla’s announcement last month that it is also working on the project (Google’s post seems to indicate that the two projects used to be distinct, but that they’re now being unified under a single API).
So what exactly are Web Intents? The name and the purpose are both similar to the Intents system that’s present in Google’s Android platform. In short, Intents allow two separate applications to communicate with each other, without either of them having to actually know what the other one is. Instead, they offer and listen for generic hooks.
There’s also an examples page live here.
For anyone into the portal world, this sounds a lot like portlet to portlet communication. This shows that the line between a portal and the rest of the world continues to blur. Web CMS vendors continue to put portal functionality into their tools. Browser makers continue to enhance the ability of their browsers with html5/css3 and this new web intents functionality.
I’m not all that concerned for the portal vendors because they continue to evolve their products and offerings. I do see a time when the vendors will have to lower their prices and offer a lot more functionality out of the box though.
