DAP-ISSUE-171: Returning false if vibration hardware is not present or using hasVibration? (prefer promises) [Vibration API]

DAP-ISSUE-171: Returning false if vibration hardware is not present or using hasVibration? (prefer promises) [Vibration API]

http://www.w3.org/2009/dap/track/issues/171

Raised by: Adam Alfar
On product: Vibration API

[from email at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2016Jan/0050.html ]

The vibration api is currently spec'd to return false from vibrate(...) if the page is not visible or (optionally) if the user has disabled vibration. Can the spec be amended to return false if vibration hardware is not present too?

Some mobile devices such as the Nexus 7 do not have hardware support for vibration. I'd like to provide feedback to users when their hardware doesn't support vibration. There is an Android API for accessing this: Vibration.hasVibrator(), though I couldn't find an API on iOS.

Ideally we would return a promise but that change is probably not web compatible. Another option is to add something like hasVibrator(). Because false is already returned for a variety of cases where vibration is not possible, I think it makes sense to also return false when hardware support prevents vibration.

Received on Tuesday, 19 January 2016 20:54:56 UTC