- On this page:
- Mission | Roadmap | Future Work | Submissions | Participate | Meetings | Minutes | Communications | Documents | History
- Nearby:
- Information on Implementations | WG Notes and Checklists | WG wiki | WebApps WG | HTML WG
- Related:
- Standards for Web Applications on Mobile: Current State and Roadmap
- Administrative:
- Draft and Approved Minutes | "My Actions" | "My Questionnaires" | Participants | Patent Policy Status | Open Issues | Open Actions | Public email list | Member email list | LC Tracker
Mission
As defined in its charter, the mission of the Device and Sensors Working Group is to create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices hardware, sensors, services and applications such as the camera, microphone, proximity sensors, native address books, calendars and native messaging applications.
Roadmap
As every Working Group, the Device and Sensors Working Group aims at gathering consensus on its specifications, both within the Working Group and with the community at large, working through an iterative process with implementors to ensure that the specifications are implementable and implemented.
The most recent version is highlighted.
| Specification | Internal draft | Public Working draft | Stable draft (Last Call) | Implementors feedback (CR) | Proposed Standard (PR) | Standard (Rec) | Test Suite | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensors | ||||||||
|
Generic Sensor API |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
30 August 2016 | Generic Sensor API is the blueprint for concrete sensors | |||||
| Ambient Light Sensor |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) |
30 August 2016 | incomplete | These concrete sensors are recast upon the Generic Sensor API | ||||
| Proximity Sensor |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
19 July 2016 | obsoleted | |||||
| Accelerometer |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) |
13 September 2016 | ||||||
| Gyroscope |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
13 September 2016 | ||||||
| Magnetometer |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) |
13 September 2016 | ||||||
| Devices | ||||||||
| Vibration |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
17 Nov 2011 | 19 Jun 2014 | 9 Sep 2014 | 18 Aug 2016 (PER) | 10 Feb 2015 | approved | |
| Battery Status |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
15 Sep 2011 | 28 Aug 2014 | 7 Jul 2016 | 29 Mar 2016 | approved | ||
| Wake Lock |
Editor's Draft (GitHub) |
Updated when Editor's Draft is updated | ||||||
| Media Capture | ||||||||
|
HTML Media Capture (HTML form extensions for media capture) |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) |
13 Dec 2012 | 19 Jun 2014 | 9 Sep 2014 | approved | |||
|
Media Capture and Streams (programmatic access to media streams, aka getUserMedia) |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) 
|
12 Feb 2015 | 4 Apr 2015 | 19 May 2016 | draft | [TF] | ||
|
MediaStream Recording (recording camera/microphone's streams) |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) 
|
20 June 2016 | [TF] | |||||
|
MediaStream Image Capture (taking still images from a camera streams) |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) 
|
31 May 2016 | [TF] | |||||
|
Media Capture Depth Stream Extensions (capturing streams from 3D cameras) |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) 
|
31 May 2016 | [TF] | |||||
| Media Capture Stream with Worker |
Editor's
Draft (GitHub) |
|||||||
| [TF] Deliverable is jointly developed with the Web RTC Working Group through the Media Capture Task Force. | ||||||||
| Other | ||||||||
|
Network Service Discovery (HTTP-based services advertised via common discovery protocols within the current network.) |
18 Feb 2014 | 20 Feb 2014 | Waiting for implementors input on intents to implement | |||||
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:
- 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.
Media Capture Task Force
This is a joint activity of the Device and Sensors Working
Group and the Web
Real-Time Communications Working Group. The work on the media
capture API getUserMedia is done on the publicly
archived mailing list: <public-media-capture@w3.org>.
Additional information is available on the Media Capture Wiki.
Participate
If you are employed by a W3C Member and want to join this group, please ask your Advisory Committee Representative to nominate you to the group as explained in the relevant instructions.
If you are not employed by W3C Member and have specific expertise to bring to this group, the said instructions explain how to get Invited Expert status.
See the list of current participants.
Meetings 
Fortnightly 60 minute teleconference Thursdays, at 10am US Eastern Time on WebEx bridge. Either join with your computer (see WebEx password) or dial in directly: +1-617-324-0000 with access code 644 877 338
Subscribe to
the icalendar feed of upcoming teleconferences
We will continue to use zakim to manage the queue (q+, q-, q? etc) but it is not integrated with WebEx.
For more information see the WebEx best practices.
IRC channel#dap on irc.w3.org port 6665 (Web IRC client).
Please note that attendance of teleconferences is restricted to registered WG participants and persons invited by the chairs.
On each call please register attendance in IRC using
Present+ firstName_lastName
We're tracking issues and action items using Tracker. You may see your actions using MyTracker.
Upon completing actions, please move them to the Pending status, and inform the WG with a summary of the action results, (including ACTION-# in the body of the message so it is linked to the action record). Text lists of pending actions and open actions are also available.
Zakim is being decommisioned, but in case we need it as a fallback, here is the information. Remember that we are using WebEx now, however. Zakim teleconference bridge: +1.617.761.6200 (VoIP: sip:zakim@voip.w3.org) code 3279
For details of upcoming teleconferencs and Face-Face meetings please see the Upcoming Meetings page.
Minutes
Minutes are posted to the public list and once approved are linked from the meetings page, which also includes links to draft minutes.
Communications
The main communication channel for this group is the publicly
archived mailing list <public-device-apis@w3.org>.
Member-confidential messages and logistical discussions can be
addressed to the member-only
archived mailing list <member-device-apis@w3.org>
Documents
Here are some documents of interest to participants in the WG:
- Workshop Report and Position Papers from the W3C Workshop on Security for Access to Device APIs from the Web
- Recommended reading
- Editorial resources
- Internal process
- Editorial pool
Patent Policy
This group operates under the W3C Patent Policy - see its Patent Policy status for more details.
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 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:
| Specification | Internal draft | Public Working draft | Stable draft (Last Call) | Implementors feedback (CR) | Standard (Rec) | Test Suite | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| APIs Design Patterns | 05 Jul 2011 | ||||||