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 (Workshop Report and Position Papers) held in December 2008, then rechartered in August 2011 under the name “Device APIs Working Group”, and rechartered again in March 2016 under the name “Device and Sensors 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:
- Nokia's Calendar API
- Nokia's Camera API
- Nokia's Contacts API
- Nokia's Messaging API
- Nokia's System Info API
- Nokia's DeviceException Interface
- BONDI 1.1 APIs (including Application Launcher, Messaging, User Interaction, File System, Gallery, Device Status, Application Configuration Camera, Communication Log, Contact, Calendar, Task)
- BONDI Architecture and Security 1.11 Approved Release (same as 1.1; see also 1.01 and 1.0)
- BONDI 1.11 Specifications (and also BONDI 1.1, 1.01 and 1.0 specifications)
Also relevant are the following:
- Policy Based Device Access Security. (earlier workshop paper: Web Runtime Policy Based Security)
The following documents are obsolete and should not be referenced:
| Obsolete documents | |||||||
| Specification | Internal draft | Public Working draft | Stable draft (Last Call) | Implementors feedback (CR) | Standard (Rec) | Test Suite | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| APIs Design Patterns | 05 Jul 2011 | ||||||
| Informative documents | |||
| Specification | Internal draft | W3C Working Group Note | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| MediaStream Capture Scenarios | 04 Jan 2013 | 6 Mar 2012 | [TF] |
| Device API Access Control Use Cases and Requirements | 16 Mar 2011 | 17 March 2011 | |
| Privacy Requirements | 23 Jun 2010 | 29 Jun 2010 | |
| Web Application Privacy Best Practices | 28 Jun 2012 | 3 July 2012 | |
| Web Intents (service discovery and light-weight RPC mechanism for web apps) | 4 Sep 2012 | 23 May 2013 | Work happens in the Web Intents task force |
| Exploratory work | ||
| Specification | Internal draft | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy Ruleset | 6 Oct 2010 | |
| Ambient Temperature Events | 16 Jul 2012 | |
| Ambient Humidity Events | 13 Jul 2012 | |
| Atmospheric Pressure Events | 13 Jul 2012 | |
See also the list of the Device and Sensors 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 the W3C Github Web Platform Tests repository to manage our test suites, whose latest versions are available on W3C Test Server, w3c-test.org.
The Working Group has currently shelved the following work items, waiting for a better overall approach to emerge:
- Network Service Discovery (HTTP-based services advertised via common discovery protocols within the current network), previous published as WD on Feb 20 2014; history on W3C mercurial server
- Calendar API (Previously published as a WD on 19 Apr 2011) Note, Dependency on TZDate.
- Messaging API
- Network Information API (brought back to incubation to the Web Incubator Community Group)
- Sensor API
- System Information API
- Tasks API (may get merged into Calendar API)
- Pick Media Intent (access to a user's media gallery from inside a Web application), (Previously published as a FPWD on 12 July 2012).
- Pick Contacts Intent (access to a user's contacts from inside a Web application). (Previously published as a FPWD on 12 Jul 2012).
- Web Intents Addendum - Local Services (how Web Intents enabled User Agents can discover and communicate with local Web Intents Services.) (Previously published as a FPWD on 04 Oct 2012.)
The Working Group is not planning to work on the following items:
- Application configuration: already possible through
localStorage, and with theWidgetinterface APIs - Notification and Feature Permissions: see the Web Notification Working Group
- File Writing and Filesystems have been moved to the Web Applications Working Group in June 2010
- A Communication Log API, due to lack of direct interest in that feature
- Audio Volume (read only) and Beep, WG Not planning to work on these
- Permissions for Device API Access has been moved to the Web Application Security Working Group which has published The Permissions API.
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.