Re: Web Intents for local network services - Clarification on browser UPnP support

Dave Raggett wrote:
> On 23/03/12 07:31, Rich Tibbett wrote:
>> Hiding or gatewaying the device service message from behind Web
>> Intents is going to lead to the plugins approach I discussed in my
>> previous email:
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-intents/2012Mar/0056.html
>
> Another possibility would be to put the code for communicating with the
> device/service into a browser extension/add on. This code would
> implement one end of a message channel where the other end is exposed to
> the web page script via web intents.

Well this would work but is still requires an Extension to proxy stuff. 
As a developer you couldn't rely on that being available when you're 
writing your web page.

>
> To avoid the need for a plugin, the extension script would need access
> to a socket API for the discovery part. This approach enables the
> extension to implement a device abstraction layer where the web page
> script is independent of whether the device is connected via Zero conf,
> UPnP, or other mechanisms including Bluetooth and USB.
>
> A further possibility is to just use web intents for discovery, and then
> have a script library loaded by the web page itself to implement the
> abstraction layer. This would work for UPnP where the device protocol is
> HTTP, but not for other cases where the protocol isn't HTTP.
>

I'd be happy to limit the scope of this interaction to HTTP based 
services initially. I think we would need some abstraction mechanisms 
for e.g. Bluetooth or USB communication and I'd be happy to tackle those 
as part of a different API.

- Rich

Received on Friday, 23 March 2012 08:42:37 UTC