- From: Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:57:38 +0100
- To: Micheil Smith <micheil@brandedcode.com>
- CC: Josh Soref <jsoref@rim.com>, "Lopez de la Fuente, Jose Manrique" <josemanrique.lopez@andago.com>, "public-device-apis@w3.org" <public-device-apis@w3.org>
On 29/06/11 19:43, Micheil Smith wrote: > I don't know too much on the specifics of hardware APIs, but what about a standard > way to communicate to bluetooth/usb devices from the browser? > > I'd imagine that it'd require binary support in the browsers (ByteArray), but then you > could implement all the parsing and protocol specific stuff at user level, outside of > the standard api definitions. > > This is sort of what we at pusher.com do with WebSockets, we provide an API on top > that sets up things like channels and implements an event style protocol on top of the > websocket protocol. This works really well because then you can have another service > that implements our subprotocol and can then hook into our service. > > I feel this sort of pattern would work quite well for a bluetooth / usb API. In the EU webinos project we are looking into web overlay models for discovery and messaging with devices with a view to applications for home networking. I built a NPAPI plugin to discover services over mDNS, SSDP (UPnP), SLP, Bluetooth and USB, see: http://www.w3.org/2011/04/discovery.html The next step will be to add mechanisms to locate and run service drivers matching a given service. These would be a mix of native code libraries plus scripts. The aim is to allow third party components to support a simplified scripting model for use by regular web application developers. Of course, security, trust and privacy are very important issues here, and are key goals for webinos. I am looking at running the plugin and the service drivers in a separate security context, e.g. a Firefox addon or Chrome extension. Applications wanting access to these services would need to get user consent, just as is the case today with access to geolocation. That is however, just the starting point for a discussion on stronger mechanisms for security and privacy for web applications as we strive to enable developers to create compelling new multi-device applications that fulfill the need for strong security and privacy. -- Dave Raggett<dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
Received on Thursday, 30 June 2011 08:58:08 UTC