MobiWebApp

Could Scream movie characters rely solely on Web standards? Impossible… as of today! There is no standard way to make phone calls from your Web browser without having to install a plugin or some other proprietary artifact. Things are about to change though.

W3C just announced the Web Real-Time Communications Working Group (or Web RTC WG), chartered to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers. In short and clear, the group is to enable audio/video calls directly from within your Web browser, using inter-operable technologies.

As for audio, this exciting work is certain to benefit mobile phones be it only because these devices have been intended for calls from the very beginning. On top of shooting a Web standard friendly sequel to Scream, combining mobile devices, social networks and real-time communications opens up a myriad of possibilities, so get ready for an evermore immersive and connected experience!

The Web RTC group got created as a result of exploration discussions at the RTC Web Workshop back in October 2010. It will work in close relationship with the IETF Real-Time Communication WEB group to ensure compatibility between the API functions that the W3C group will work on and the Profile that the IETF group will define.

Instructions to join the group are available.

A couple weeks ago, W3C announced the creation of a new Working Group, the Audio Working Group.

This group has been chartered to bring more advanced audio capabilities to the Web platform.

HTML5 already provides a useful <audio> element, with a scriptable interface to control how audio resources can be played.

The additional APIs that this new group will develop adds capabilities to process and synthetize audio streams in JavaScript.

This work is based on exploration work made in the W3C Audio Incubator Group, and some early experimental implementations of related APIs are already available in Firefox and Chrome.

As their etymology indicates, phones have historically been primarily sound-based devices, and this new work on improving the audio capabilities of the Web is certain to benefit mobile devices. In particular, the role of audio in games (a big part of the applications space on mobile devices) makes this work really exciting.

You can follow the work of the group in its microblog on Identi.ca or Twitter.

As the W3C Geolocation Working Group is putting the last touches on the Geolocation API, the new charter of the group was officially approved yesterday.

That new charter adds two new specifications to the group roadmap:

• a second version of the Geolocation API that includes additional information, e.g. civic addesses; an editors draft of that specification is already available;
• a DeviceOrientation Event specification which provides information on the orientation of the device — in other words, it makes it possible to react to accelerometer and gyroscopes changes from within the Web environment; an editors draft of that API is also available, and is known to be already implemented in some mobile browsers (e.g. iOS 4.2+ Safari).

For those interested, please see how to join that group.

The objectives of the MobiWebApp European research project that W3C is leading include disseminating knowledge of the current work inside W3C that facilitate the creation of mobile Web applications, as well as building a standardization roadmap that identifies the gap in the current standardization landscape.

I have just published an important first step in that direction: the Mobile Web Applications standards: February 2011 current state and roadmap represents a first attempt at compiling all the mobile-relevant Web applications technologies in development in W3C.

It is a work in progress, a picture of the current state that I plan to update regularly, probably every three months.

It has not received wide review yet, so the data it includes should be taken with caution, since it likely contain mistakes that will be fixed based on the feedback we receive.

Please send bug reports, suggestions, and general feedback to dom@w3.org, and I’ll do my best to integrate it in the next version of the document.