On: Introducing WebAPI

[BrandonSmith]

Frankly, this is Mozilla's reaction to Google's http://www.webrtc.org/

To put it in perspective, Mozilla has no mobile platform and is crying for relevance.

Apple -> iOS/WebKit Google -> Android/WebKit Mozilla -> ???/Fennec

By getting desktop browsers to implement telephony and other collaboration APIs, I'm sure their hope is to get mobile browsers to likewise expose the precious voice and video APIs of the mobile handsets. And perhaps by doing this, lines between browsers on mobile devices are blurred to where Fennec has a role.

[sylvinus → BrandonSmith]

"The WebRTC initiative is a project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera." http://www.webrtc.org/

[FrankBooth → BrandonSmith]

WebRTC is a realtime voice/video communications API, and Mozilla are working with Google on shipping an implementation.

Frankly, your tone is trollish.

[BrandonSmith → FrankBooth]

You're right. It did come off trollish. Wasn't my intent. I'm sorry to both parties.

Both WebAPI and WebRTC will produce awesome collaboration apps. Wins all around.

But how, exactly, do the two fit together? Is WebRTC a low-level implementation of protocols, codecs, and transports whereas WebAPI provide the friendly developer-oriented APIs?

Will WebAPI provide hooks for standard widgets for dialer, SMS, contacts, etc?

[MatthewPhillips → BrandonSmith]

> But how, exactly, do the two fit together? Is WebRTC a low-level implementation of protocols, codecs, and transports whereas WebAPI provide the friendly developer-oriented APIs?

They're not related. WebRTC is a video chat/conferencing project.

> Will WebAPI provide hooks for standard widgets for dialer, SMS, contacts, etc?

Yes, that's its precise purpose.

[hrabago → MatthewPhillips]

> > Will WebAPI provide hooks for standard widgets for dialer, SMS, contacts, etc? > Yes, that's its precise purpose.

I'm not seeing any indication that standard widgets are even in their goals. For instance, their Telephony API [1] lists functions that an application implementing its own UI might call, but nothing that indicates that those are UI widgets or expose UI-like functionalities.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674726

[MatthewPhillips → hrabago]

Well, this is WebAPI after all, not WebUI... but why do you think they should implement UI widgets? That goes against the grain of the web.

[hrabago → MatthewPhillips]

I don't think they should. In fact I hope they don't.