Building a Better Web
June 19–20, 2017: Training
June 20–22, 2017: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Access your device hardware with the W3C Generic Sensor API (sponsored by Intel)

Alexis Menard (Intel)
3:35pm–4:15pm Thursday, June 22, 2017
Sponsored
 Location: 212 CD (Sponsored)
Secondary topics:  Hardware and the web, Node.js, Progressive web apps
Average rating: *****
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Who is this presentation for?

  • Web developers, web game developers, and IoT developers

Prerequisite knowledge

  • A basic understanding of web platform APIs and JavaScript basic concepts (e.g., Promises)

What you'll learn

  • Explore the new W3C Generic Sensor API, which enables you to use hardware sensors in your website or web app

Description

With the increasing adoption of progressive web apps, the web platform is becoming more attractive every day. However, in order to complete the circle and provide all the tools and APIs developers need, we must expose the hardware sensors. Historically, the web platform has lagged in exposing low-level features, due to privacy and security concerns and the complexity of the task. This challenge is finally solved with the W3C Generic Sensor API, which creates a modern, forward-looking base API to expose hardware sensors (e.g., ambient light sensors and motion sensors).

Thanks to this API, it’s now easier to create web-based games that leverage sensors or just improve the usability of any website. You can also leverage this API on Node.js- or JavaScript-based environments for targeting the IoT. Alexis Menard offers an overview of the new W3C Generic Sensor API, showing examples of how to use the API and diving into the current status of the spec and the implementation. Join in to learn how you can implement it today and catch a glimpse of future plans.

This session is sponsored by Intel.

Photo of Alexis Menard

Alexis Menard

Intel

Alexis Menard is a software engineer at Intel’s Open Source Technology Center in Portland, Oregon. His main focus is on the ever-evolving WebPlatform, which includes work on W3C standards as well as Blink/Chromium. In the latter projects, he serves as both developer and code reviewer. Alexis also worked on Crosswalk, an HTML5 runtime/webview for Android, where he did a bit of everything. Prior to Intel, Alexis worked on QtWebKit and WebKit at the Brazilian Nokia research center (INdT) and on the Qt framework as a part of Nokia (former Trolltech). He is also a former KDE contributor, contributing mostly to Plasma, the desktop shell of KDE.