Being on the bleeding edge of open web standards ain't easy...

March 16, 2011 · by Haavard

Sometimes, being on the bleeding edge, and being the first to support interesting new web technologies, causes problems.

A couple of days ago, we released an Android build with support for the HTML5 <device> element. This gives you access to the phone's camera, which opens up new possibilities on the web, such as video conferencing. Our guys had been working on this for a while, and I guess they were looking forward to seeing what people would be able to do with it.

But that very same day, the decision was made to remove the <device> element from the HTML5 specification, and replace it with a JavaScript API.

The good news is that we can probably reuse quite a bit of what we did to support <device>. From what I hear, the Opera guys involved with HTML5 actually welcomed the change as well.

But this shows that being on the bleeding edge isn't always easy. Things can change quickly in the world of technology!

Readers' comments 8

Left under the original article, as archived.

MorphdreamerWednesday, March 16, 2011 3:13:39 PM
AnuaR ShWednesday, March 16, 2011 3:24:33 PM
Opera co-founder WHATWG. Little hard to believe that you (Opera) did not assume that these changes are (might)coming up...
Charles SchlossWednesday, March 16, 2011 3:31:42 PM
http://files.myopera.com/Tamil/Smilies/Yes.gif -

There are still other parts of HTML 5 (like video element) under what is the way forward
PengeWednesday, March 16, 2011 3:35:04 PM
Originally posted by haavard:

Things can change quickly in the world of technology!

But not if it's supported by a multinational company, for example Google or MS.

I mean link1, link2

It's even supported by the IE9.
Rich TibbettWednesday, March 16, 2011 3:53:09 PM
Yes, we welcome the spec change since it neatly solves a couple of other thorny issues.

The objective of our project was to feedback to the specifications. Both the WHATWG and ourselves ended up coming to the same conclusions independently: that a JavaScript API just makes more sense for user interfaces and development purposes than an HTML element.

We will release a public build shortly and we're deciding how to proceed with the device bootstrap mechanism. It's going to be fun to get this in to developers hands
Cutting SpoonWednesday, March 16, 2011 4:29:29 PM
May as well show the work before moving forward. As OP said, once it's been built you just work with the internal API pinning.
ClashCityRockerWednesday, March 16, 2011 4:35:19 PM
I wasn't so much interested in the <device> stuff (although it sounded cool), I was more interested in seeing an updated Android Opera Mobile build, it's been months since we heard anything....
Constantine VesnaWednesday, March 16, 2011 10:00:19 PM
Details are irrelevant in long-term, be it <device> tag or JS API, lets just see what works best, and bring it to masses ! Web need more inputs than keyboards, mouses and touch-screens.

p.s.: JS API seems potentially more robust, than <device>. And its peer-to-peer