{"id":4222,"date":"2012-02-24T17:17:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T00:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/?p=4222"},"modified":"2014-04-24T15:39:16","modified_gmt":"2014-04-24T22:39:16","slug":"mobile-web-api-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/blogarchive\/blog\/2012\/02\/24\/mobile-web-api-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Mozilla and the Mobile Web API Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor’s Note: Brendan Eich, Mozilla CTO, posted on his blog<\/a> about Mozilla and the mobile Web API evolution. This is reposted below:<\/em><\/p>\n

Ragavan Srinivasan\u2019s post about the forthcoming Mozilla Marketplace<\/a> for Open Web Apps<\/a> inspired me to write about Mozilla\u2019s surging Web and Device API standards work.<\/p>\n

A bit of background. Mozilla has always contributed to web standards, going back to the start of the project. We co-founded<\/a> the WHAT-WG<\/a> to kick off HTML5<\/a>. As readers of this blog know, we are a leader in JS standardization<\/a>. We have some of the top CSS<\/a> and layout<\/a> experts in the world.<\/p>\n

In the last eight months, our efforts to extend the web standards to include new APIs needed to build compelling apps and OS components on mobile devices have really caught fire. B2G<\/a> and Open Web Apps<\/a> are the fuel for this fire.<\/p>\n

So I thought I would compile a list of emerging APIs to which we\u2019ve contributed. In citing Mozillans I do not mean to minimize the efforts of standardization colleagues at Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Opera, the W3C and elsewhere. Standards are a multi-vendor effort (although excluding WebGL [see UPDATE below] one shiny name is conspicuously absent from this list).<\/p>\n

The Mozilla contributions are worth noting both to acknowledge the individuals involved, and to highlight how Mozilla is championing device APIs for the web without having a native application stack blessed with such APIs on offer. We see the Web as quickly evolving to match native stacks. We have no other agenda than improving the Web to improve its users\u2019 lives, including Web developers\u2019 lives \u2014 especially mobile users and developers.<\/p>\n

As always, standards in progress are subject to change, yet require prototype implementation and user-testing. Mozilla remains committed to playing fairly by not forging de-facto standards out of prototypes, rather proposing before disposing and in the end tracking whatever is standardized.<\/p>\n

Here is the list, starting with some 2011-era work:<\/p>\n