Why the OS Matters
Linked by Kroc Camen on Wed 6th Oct 2010 16:37 UTC
Editorial In response to Jean-Louis Glassee's article "The OS Doesn't Matter..." I wrote quite simply: the future of the browser wars is he who integrates with the OS best. This phrase came from my article lambasting Microsoft's use of HTML for their IE9 jump lists, which caused quite a stir. In the wave of ever increasing web browser capability, the operating system is going to matter to web users more than it ever has before.
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Last hurdle for browsers: access to devices
by Lennie on Wed 6th Oct 2010 20:53 UTC
Lennie
Member since:
2007-09-22

The editor of HTML5 (Ian Hickson) has created a draft specification for HTML-applications to get access to devices. Which means you won't need anymore plugins (read:currently Flash) for a webapplication to get access to the webcam.

Or you can make a webapplication which can read directly from a barcode reader:

http://ajaxian.com/archives/video-conferencing-with-the-html5-devic...
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/

Why not upload your photos directly from your USB-connected camera through the webbrowser into the Photoshop-like webapp ?

(yes, yes, all with: grant this web page/domain access to device-X interface ofcourse)

Edited 2010-10-06 20:55 UTC

Reply Score: 2

Kroc Member since:
2005-11-10

There’s also experimentation going on with `<input type="camera" />` and `<input type="speech" />`. This is exactly where OS integration and native-UI totally matter.

Reply Parent Score: 1

Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

If these tags really get added to the browser, I doubt there will be much of a GUI.

That is the whole point, the browser is the UI.

Even before any webpads (I'm not talking about the iPad, I'm talking about, long, long ago) I was thinking one device which connects to the Internet is really all we need.

Next think on my list of things that still need to be 'invented' is a good API for the user to say, please copy this file from web-application X to web-application Y.

Now that we have oAuth, etc. it might start to happen.

Edited 2010-10-06 22:08 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2