Re: Time to take a leadership position on client-side APIs

Thanks, I responded to his comment as follows:

"Thanks for the info. A number of companies have explored the plugin 
approach, but so far there has been little work on common APIs. I 
think it is critical to bring together all of the stakeholders and 
perhaps a W3C Workshop sponsored by the Mobile Web Initiative might 
be a good way to assist with that."

It is clear that with a plugin and Ajax, you can do some really cool 
things, but the web page would be specific to the plugin and there 
is the usual problem with plugins in that not everyone will have the 
plugin installed. This has plagued the use of video on the web.

p.s. just to make it clear, I don't believe that the delivery 
context should be specific to mobile devices, but rather seem them 
as driving the initial round of standards work.

  Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Dominique Hazael-Massieux wrote:

>
> Le mercredi 06 février 2008 à 16:35 +0000, Dave Raggett a écrit :
>> There is huge potential for mobile web applications that can access
>> device capabilities from client-side scripts. There has been a lot
>> of work on J2ME APIs, but we lack standards for exposing local
>> device capabilities to applications running in web browsers. The
>> time has surely come for W3C to bring interested parties together to
>> work on fixing this as a matter of priority. [...]
>
> FWIW, someone (Peter Cranstone) commented on your related blog entry -
> I'm pasting it here in case this triggers further discussion:
>> Everything you have outlined above can be done using nothing more 
>> than the current HTTP standard and a simple browser plug-in on 
>> the mobile device.
>>
>> We can show you everything you are talking about in your post 
>> right now running over current HTTP standards talking to standard 
>> Apache or IIS web servers.
>>
>> In addition our design allows for the consumers privacy to be 
>> maintained while keeping in place the current JavaScript sandbox 
>> - but yet allowing JavaScript to talk to the mobile device "IF" 
>> the consumer allows it.
>>
>> Our solution can do all of the following:
>> # dynamic content adaptation on client
>> #  checking battery level, signal strength
>> #  controlling the display brightness
>> #  turning the phone's vibrator on and off
>> #  checking screen orientation and size
>> #  checking available free memory
>> # implementing location-based services
>> #  interface to on-phone applications (PIM)
>> including calendar and contacts
>> #  allowing web page scripts to initiate phone calls
> http://www.w3.org/blog/MWITeam/2008/02/06/exposing_device_capabilities_to_web_appl#comments
>
> Dom
>
>
>