Re: Why aren't most devices virtual web services?

On Jan 8, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Jan 2010, Adam Barth wrote:
>> 
>> I think Mark's suggestion is to make these APIs webby by giving them 
>> URLs and letting code interact with them the same way code interacts 
>> with every other web service.  Instead of having these URLs represent 
>> remote services, they would represent local services.  This lets us 
>> leverage a lot of existing infrastructure, especially in terms of 
>> privacy and security, and aligns the device APIs with the web 
>> architecture.
> 
> I like this idea. It would mean, for instance, that Web-based contacts 
> services (e.g. Facebook) could plug into the same API that the local 
> contacts database uses. Similarly, sites could use a common Calendar API 
> and the user could decide if it should use the system calendar, or some 
> Web-based calendar.
> 
> -- 
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
> 


Another benefit, although a implementation detail and I am somewhat skeptical if it will happen, is that it would allow 3rd parties to add in new devices without having to know much about the internal browser guts.  The work of implementing device apis could move out of the browser space and could be provided by and supported by operating system vendors.

Doug

Received on Saturday, 9 January 2010 02:02:46 UTC