Hello.

I am Paul Kinlan.

A Developer Advocate for Chrome and the Open Web at Google.

I love the web. The web should allow anyone to access any experience that they need without the need for native install or content walled garden.

This is interesting

Paul Kinlan

This tool helps our team quickly bookmark and share interesting links with each other. Simply drag the provided link to your bookmarks bar to easily save and share any webpage with the team.

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Testing-file-share-target-from-camera

Paul Kinlan

I successfully tested sharing a photo directly from the camera app to another app. Check it out!

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Web Share Target API

Paul Kinlan

Share Target API is now in Chrome breaking down one of the last silos of native platforms

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Breaking down silos by sharing more on the web

Paul Kinlan

This post discusses the problem of content silos on the web, particularly how native apps dominate sharing functionalities, limiting the web's reach. It highlights the irony of navigator.share, which, while enabling web sharing, still directs users towards native apps. The post emphasizes the need for the web to participate more actively in user interactions. It celebrates the 'Improved add to home-screen' feature for PWAs on Android, generating APKs and making them function more like native apps. Finally, it introduces the promising 'Share Target API', allowing PWAs to receive shared content, including links, thus breaking down silos and fostering a more inclusive web ecosystem.

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Simple sharing on the web with navigator.share

Paul Kinlan

I'm excited to share a new, simple API for sharing on the web called navigator.share! It's available in Chrome Dev Channel on Android and allows websites to connect with native apps for sharing. This is a step towards a better inter-app communication system, simplifying sharing and potentially extending to other app interactions. You can try it now on my blog by clicking the share button. I've updated my blog to use it, falling back to my existing solution if the API isn't available. Check out the ChromeStatus page and other linked resources for more information and give us feedback!

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Shadow DOM and Progressive Enhancement to create a Sharing component

Paul Kinlan

I explored building a progressively enhanced sharing web component using Shadow DOM. My focus was on URL visibility and manipulation within web apps, even when they behave like native applications. The component is designed to be customizable and work across browsers, with or without JavaScript, by leveraging existing elements like anchor tags. It uses a Twitter intent as a fallback sharing mechanism when Web Components aren't supported. I'm excited about the potential of web components, even without widespread custom element support.

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Launch an Android app from the web and cleanly fallback to web

Paul Kinlan

Sharing content between web and apps is difficult due to platform incompatibility. Android's intent system offers a potential solution, but it lacks portability. This post explores a workaround for sharing actions, using a server-side redirect to handle intent URLs for Android users while providing a fallback to a web service like Twitter for other platforms. This approach allows cross-platform functionality while leveraging Android's intent system when available.

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Triggering a native Share intent on Android from the web

Paul Kinlan

This story starts a long time, was tickled into existing after I visited FlipKart in Bangalore and was finalized after an internal conversation about the fact that it is impossible to trigger the share dialog in Android from the web. Lots of people want it, it turns out everyone thought it wasn't possible. It is.*

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Parsing the screenshot that Chrome for Android includes via ACTION_SEND intent

Paul Kinlan

When you share a link from Chrome, you can also get a screenshot using a couple of Intent Extras

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