RE: Haptics CSS extension proposal

Hi All,

We appreciate all the feedback about the haptics CSS proposal and want to keep the discussions alive. We believe that being able to define tactile feedback for (custom) web elements is a must-have feature and the best way to enable it is by using CSS. I understand the different doubts and thoughts that arose here and try to further clarify our views as well as the reasoning behind our proposal.


To Mikko Rantalainen:
When we were considering the naming of the properties, we first concluded that the industry has two commonly used terms that mean the same: tactile feedback and haptics. Both of them could be used to describe what the properties are and do, but the term haptic is shorter and therefore we chose it. While 'touch-feel' is not a bad name, it's not a commonly accepted term for tactile feedback.

I totally agree with you about the future prospect of new properties. Currently we don't need to specify them as you said, and some of them may never become reality, but it's good to take into account that tactile feedback technologies are developing and using CSS is future-proof in this sense.


To Brad Kemper:
Regarding the use of the appearance property to specify tactile feedback: Clearly the tactile feedback is a new thing, and what is the best way for enabling developers to define tactile feedback for web elements, is not a simple question. We evaluated different possibilities and realized that this is a new distinct feature and therefore needs a new distinct interface. I understand your initial impression as it is normal that when a new feature like this evolves, first we want to think if and how it would fit to the existing frameworks. We thought about this with the conclusion that it certainly needs its own interface.

Currently the key use case is to be able to create custom JS controls that have the same tactile feedback than native controls of the underlying platform. This is independent from the appearance, would you agree? Same goes for links: It should be possible to implement a custom control that feels like a link without actually being a traditional link.


To François:
Using the combination of WAI-ARIA and the appearance properties has the same issues as described above. If we want to be able to define tactile feedback without defining some specific appearance or ARIA role (or other way around), we need to have an own interface for specifying it. The interface we are proposing is simple and covers well the current key use case described above. It is also nicely expandable in the future if tactile feedback technologies evolve and enable more sophisticated features.


Br,
Kim Grönholm


>-----Original Message-----
>From: www-style-request@w3.org [mailto:www-style-request@w3.org] On
>Behalf Of Gronholm Kim.1 (Nokia-D/Tampere)
>Sent: 11. kesäkuuta 2010 13:27
>To: www-style@w3.org
>Cc: Barstow Art (Nokia-CIC/Boston); Knoll Lars (Nokia-D-Qt/Oslo);
>Oksanen Ilkka (Nokia-D/Espoo); Haverinen Henry (Nokia-D-Qt/Oslo)
>Subject: Haptics CSS extension proposal
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>We have been researching tactile feedback (haptics) support for touch
>based web user interfaces, and we would like to propose the results of
>the research to be elaborated as web standards.
>
>Tactile feedback is based on the sense of touch, for example vibrating
>the screen or giving a more realistic sense of a physical object when
>the user touches the UI.  As the physical feel of an element can be
>considered a part of its style, we're proposing to extend CSS to allow
>assigning the tactile feedback style to web elements. According to our
>studies the most convenient and natural way to specify haptic feedback
>is CSS. We also considered implementing haptics for web using WAI-ARIA
>but came to the conclusion that haptics is not (just) an accessibility
>feature although it can be used for improving accessibility as well.
>
>So please check out our initial draft here:
>http://portaali.org/~ilkkao/w3c/CSS/css3-haptics.html

>and let us know if the members of the WG (or the CSS Community at large)
>are interested in contributing to the evolution of the spec.
>
>Any comments would be most welcome and we'll be happy to answer all
>questions!
>
>
>Best regards,
>Kim Grönholm,
>Nokia

Received on Friday, 25 June 2010 07:01:25 UTC