Device APIs Working Group

On this page:
Mission | Roadmap | Device Status APIs Task Force | Future Work | Submissions | Participate | Meetings | Minutes | Communications | Documents | History
Nearby:
Information on Implementations | WG Notes and Checklists | DAP wiki | WebApps WG | HTML WG
Administrative:
Draft and Approved Minutes | "My Actions" | "My Questionnaires" | Participants | Patent Policy Status | Open Issues | Open Actions | Public email list | Member email list | LC Tracker

Mission

As defined in its charter, the mission of the Device APIs Working Group is to create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services such as Calendar, Contacts, Camera, etc.

Roadmap

As every Working Group, the Device APIs Working Group aims at gathering consensus on its specifications, both within the Working Group and with the community at large, working through an iterative process with implementors to ensure that the specifications are implementable and implemented.

NB: the dates marked with a question mark have not been approved by the Working Group yet.

SpecificationInternal draftPublic Working draftStable draft (Last Call)Implementors feedback (CR)Standard (Rec)Test SuiteNotes
Priority APIs
Battery status 04 Nov 201115 Sep 201129 Nov 2011Managed by the Device Status API task force
Contacts (reading from addressbook)31 Aug 20119 Dec 201016 Jun 2011draft
HTML Media Capture (camera/microphone interactions through HTML forms)06 Apr 201114 Apr 2011Waiting for implementation/UX experience
Relation to HTML5?
Messaging (SMS, MMS, emails)04 Jul 201114 Apr 2011
Network Information API04 Nov 20117 June 2011Managed by the Device Status API task force
Sensor API11 Nov 2011
Vibration API17 Nov 201117 Nov 2011
Media Capture API (programmatic access to camera/microphone)30 Nov 201128 Sep 2010 (but completely outdated)Programmatic API that completes the form based approach.
Joint deliverable with the Web RTC Working Group through the Media Capture Task Force
Other
Application RegistrationWork happens in the Web Intents task force
Calendar05 May 201119 Apr 2011Dependency on TZDate
Feature Permissions31 Oct 2011Originally developed by Web Notifications WG
Menu API
Permissions for Device API Access30 Sep 20105 Oct 2010
At risk
Audio Volume (read only)WG Not planning to work on this
BeepWG Not planning to work on this
Gallery (stored media interactions)04 Nov 2010Relates to API for Media Resource?
Systems info and events (CPU, network, etc.)16 Mar 20112 Feb 2010Will likely need to be vastly reworked
TasksNo editor — currently at risk, probably to be merged into calendar API
Informative documents
MediaStream Capture Scenarios6 Dec 2011Joint deliverable with the Web RTC Working Group through the Media Capture Task Force
APIs Requirements05 Jan 201115 Oct 2009
Device API Access Control Use Cases and Requirements16 Mar 201117 March 2011
Privacy Requirements23 Jun 201029 Jun 2010
Web Application Privacy Best Practices27 Oct 20114 August 2011
Exploratory work
Discovery
Privacy Ruleset6 Oct 2010

See also the list of the Device APIs published Technical Reports.

As part of its technical work, the group ensures that its APIs are reviewed according to a checklist of good practices for APIs.

The history and past revisions of the documents drafts are available in the W3C public CVS server.

We use a Mercurial repository on dvcs.w3.org, clonable with hg clone https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/dap, to manage our test suites, whose latest versions are available on W3C Test Server, w3c-test.org (more info).

The Working Group is not planning to work on the following items:

APIs that have been suggested as worth consideration for the group but not currently prioritised (and therefore not up for discussion) are kept in the FutureWork page on the group's wiki.

See also coordination points with the Web Applications Working Group.

Device Status APIs Task Force

The work on the Network information API and the Battery Status API are done as part of a task force in the group, the Device Status APIs Task Force, whose discussions happen on the public-device-status@w3.org mailing list. To join the task force, simply subscribe to the list.

The participants to the task force have the same IPR obligations as for participation in the whole group.

Media Capture Task Force

This is a joint activity of the Device APIs Working Group and the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group. The work on the media capture API getUserMedia is done on the publicly archived mailing list: <public-media-capture@w3.org>.

Web Intents Task Force

This is a joint activity of the Device APIs Working Group and the Web Applications Working Group. The aim is to review the Web Intents proposal and to see whether it can be adapted to support additional use cases for service discovery, e.g. those of the Web & TV Interest Group. The work on Web Intents is done in the Web Intents task force on the publicly archived mailing list: <public-web-intents@w3.org>. Additional information is available on the Web Intents Wiki.

Participate

If you are employed by a W3C Member and want to join this group, please ask your Advisory Committee Representative to nominate you to the group as explained in the relevant instructions.

If you are not employed by W3C Member and have specific expertise to bring to this group, the said instructions explain how to get Invited Expert status.

See the list of current participants.

Meetings

Weekly 90 minute teleconference Wednesdays, at 10am US Eastern Time on Zakim teleconference bridge: +1.617.761.6200 (VoIP: sip:zakim@voip.w3.org) code 3279 IRC channel #dap on irc.w3.org port 6665 (Web IRC client).

Please note that attendance of DAP WG teleconferences is restricted to registered WG participants and persons invited by the chairs.

On each call please register attendance in IRC using

Present+ firstName_lastName

and please update the information on which caller you are. For example, if you are noted as +1-781-555-aaaa, use

zakim, aaaa is yourHandle

Cheers, Kenny if you are ??P5 then use

zakim, ??P5 is yourHandle

You can obtain agenda and bridge information with /Topic at any time from within IRC.

We're tracking issues and action items using Tracker. You may see your actions using MyTracker.

Upon completing actions, please move them to the Pending status, and inform the WG with a summary of the action results, (including ACTION-# in the body of the message so it is linked to the action record). Text lists of pending actions and open actions are also available .

Face to face meetings

Our next F2F meeting is scheduled for March 20-22, in Shenzhen, China, hosted by Huawei: Logistics.

Minutes

Minutes are taken in rotation, please consult the list of scribes for further details.

Minutes are posted to the public list and once approved are linked from the meetings page, which also includes links to draft minutes.

Communications

The main communication channel for this group is the publicly archived mailing list <public-device-apis@w3.org>.

Member-confidential messages and logistical discussions can be addressed to the member-only archived mailing list <member-device-apis@w3.org>

Documents

Here are some documents of interest to participants in the WG:

Patent Policy

This group operates under the W3C Patent Policy - see its Patent Policy status for more details.

History

The Working Group was first chartered in July 2009 as the “Device APIs & Policy Working Group”, as a follow-up to the workshop on Security for Access to Device APIs from the Web held in December 2008, and then rechartered in August 2011 under the name “Device APIs Working Group”.

The group used to work on the following documents, but their development has been stopped:

The following were submitted as starting points for this group's deliverables:

Also relevant are the following:

The following documents are obsolete and should not be referenced:

SpecificationInternal draftPublic Working draftStable draft (Last Call)Implementors feedback (CR)Standard (Rec)Test SuiteNotes
APIs Design Patterns05 Jul 2011