Bookmarklets are an unsung superpower of Desktop Web Browsers. They are not as powerful as Chrome Extensions, they require a user gesture, they don't have access to browser specific API's (such as chrome.*), yet I love them. In their simplest form (a Bookmark) they navigate you to a URL; more complex forms (Bookmarklets) navigate to a javascript: URL which means you can run simple automated actions that run in the context of the page, creating functionality that the original developer didn't get around to creating just yet, just at the click of a button.
I've frequently said that for web apps to compete effectively in the world of apps, they need to be integrated in to all of the places that users expect apps to be. Inter-app communication is one of the major missing pieces of the web platform, and specifically one of the last major missing features is native level sharing: Web apps need to be able to get data out of their silo and into other web sites and apps; they also need to be able to receive the data from other native apps and sites.
Pete LePage introduces the Web Share Target API and the the availability in Chrome via an origin trial
Until now, only native apps could register as a share target. The Web Share Target API allows installed web apps to register with the underlying OS as a share target to receive shared content from either the Web Share API or system events, like the OS-level share button.
Read full post.
This API is a game changer on the web, it opens the web up to something that was only once available to native apps: Native Sharing.
This article is over a year late. It was stuck in my drafts for a long time, yet I think the idea is something that we need to solve into 2018. It also turns out that other issues have arisen in the last year that make it a bit more relevant.
I was in Indonesia earlier in 2016 idly chatting with developers and it came up in conversation that the web is screwed (they were the literal words).
