Re: New browser controls and an API for using them

kenny heaton wrote:

>For use with web applications, should there be new controls added to
>web browsers tool bars, and a scripting API that allows web developers
>to tie into them?
>  
>
Perhaps, but they shouldn't be thought of in terms of "new controls 
added to web browser tool bars". Web applications are truly 
applications, and it may be correct for them to expose certain commands 
to their runtime container (which may be a browser), and that container 
may make them available as it sees fit (perhaps adds them to a toolbar). 
By exposing these commands to the outside world, other 
applications/developers with permissions could access them. 
Accessibility software could use them. But we shouldn't think it UI 
terms of adding a particular control to a particular piece of software.

>The advantages of this would be that common buttons and controls that
>are normally expected in application, such as undo/cut/copy/paste,
>could exist in web application as well. A developer could define these
>in the application itself (as apposed to in the browser), but giving
>them a home in the browser means they will be consistent and will be
>where the user expects them to be. They can also have there own
>browser defined key board short cuts adding to usability and
>accessibility.
>  
>
There should certainly be ontologies of exposed commands with predefined 
semantics, so that if you see the "cut" command (or perhaps the 
http://w3.org/ontologies/web2/commands#cut command ) exposed by an 
application you can know what it's for. The browser (or whatever 
software is being used to host the application) could integrate this 
command into its menu/toolbar layout if it wanted to.

Garret

Received on Wednesday, 23 November 2005 22:04:54 UTC