Re: <device> proposal (for video conferencing, etc)

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:

> You can do this with HTML5-era technologies in at least two ways: an
> <iframe> to a site that provides a postMessage() API, and a WebSocket to
> the site that provides a WebSocket protocol. Both can be done with "just"
> a URL (much like OpenID).
>

While those are both possible pieces of the puzzle, I don't think they solve
the particular problem I was getting at.  The problem is that something
needs to keep track of what "virtual devices" the user has encountered on
other sites in order to populate the device list -- in other words, the
producing and consuming sites need a way to discover each other.  I suppose
a middleman web site could serve this purpose, but the user would have to
place a great deal of trust in this middleman.  Having the browser keep
track of capabilities seems safer to me.

But I suppose I should go with the middleman approach for now, and try to
get browser support once I can better demonstrate the usefulness.


> > > What would you suggest instead of ".data"?
> >
> > Maybe ".object"?  I don't know what words are already reserved.
>
> "object" is a reserved word in WebIDL, so it would be better to avoid it.
> Also everything's an object, so it's even vaguer than "data"! :-) I'll
> ponder the issue, however. Maybe "selection", or some such.
>

Indeed, my concern was that "data" is too specific in this case.  :)