>>Mozilla would like to introduce WebAPI with the goal to provide a basic HTML5 phone experience within 3 to 6 months. [...] Specification drafts and implementation prototypes will be available, and it will be submitted to W3C for standardization.
3 to 6 months is a fairly short timeline for getting all browser vendors and the W3C on board, not to mention getting stable and secure implementations into the wild. At least they're doing all the legwork by putting together the initial specification drafts and implementation prototypes. These additions would be truly incredible if accepted. I know they like to lump every standard under HTML5 these days so I wonder if this is intended to be an addition to that or if WebAPI is completely orthogonal to HTML5.
3 to 6 months is a fairly short timeline for getting all browser vendors and the W3C on board
As far as the specs go, most of the things they list have W3C APIs at reasonably advanced stages. I keep track (somewhat) of the Camera APIs, and they are at a point where Opera has an experimental implementation on Android, and Ericsson has a Webkit version with some support.
The implementation is more tricky. They can fix Firefox on Android of course, but in theory they could pay people to work on Webkit to help out iOS users (and the default Android browser). I'm not sure what Mozilla sees as their vision: is it to create the best web browser on the planet, or is it to make the web platform as good as it could be?
I don't see how they could help Microsoft out with their implementation though.
The more sophisticated the web platforms become, the more opportunities there are to make the best browser on the platform. Conversely, if the web platform stagnates, meaningfully differentiating a browser gets more difficult.
3 to 6 months is a fairly short timeline for getting all browser vendors and the W3C on board, not to mention getting stable and secure implementations into the wild. At least they're doing all the legwork by putting together the initial specification drafts and implementation prototypes. These additions would be truly incredible if accepted. I know they like to lump every standard under HTML5 these days so I wonder if this is intended to be an addition to that or if WebAPI is completely orthogonal to HTML5.