Mozilla has launched an ambitious new project aimed at breaking down the proprietary app systems on today's mobile devices. The project, dubbed WebAPI, is Mozilla's effort to provide a consistent, cross-platform, web-based API for mobile app developers. Using WebAPI, developers would write HTML5 applications rather than native apps for iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms.
Mozilla isn't just talking about WebAPI, it's already hard at work and plans to develop the APIs necessary to provide “a basic HTML5 phone experience” within six months. After that, the APIs will be submitted to the W3C for standardization.
Among the APIs Mozilla wants to develop are a telephone and messaging API for calls and SMS, a contacts API, a camera API and half a dozen more.
If those APIs sound vaguely familiar it might be because the W3C's Device APIs Working Group is covering similar ground. So why the new effort from Mozilla? Well, Mozilla's WebAPI is a part of its larger Boot to Gecko Project, which aims to eventually develop an operating system that emphasizes standards-based Web technologies. With that end goal in mind, WebAPI may end up somewhat different than what the W3C is trying to build.
It's also possible that Mozilla simply doesn't want to wait for the Device APIs Working Group. Mozilla wants WebAPI up and running in a mere six months, the W3C's Device APIs Work Group is unlikely to move that fast. But as Mozilla Technical Evangelist Robert Nyman notes in a comment on his post announcing WebAPI, "the idea is to collaborate with W3C and all players and together form a good solution, and not just dump it on them."
The dream of write-once, run-anywhere software is nothing new and, if history is any guide, Mozilla's WebAPI efforts may well be doomed. The open source giant does have one thing going for it that most other efforts don't have—the open Web. Most write-once, run-anywhere attempts have come from companies like Adobe and were built around proprietary frameworks. WebAPI doesn't suffer from vender lock-in the way some projects have. WebAPI's main roadblock is convincing other mobile Web browsers to support the APIs.
In order for WebAPI to be appealing for developers, Mozilla will need Apple, Google and other mobile browser makers to implement the APIs so that WebAPI can compete with native applications. Before you dismiss that as an impossibility, bear in mind that Apple's original vision for iOS app development was based around HTML applications, and you'd be hard pressed to find a company more eager to embrace Web apps than Google. Whether or not either company will devote any resources to implementing WebAPI remains to be seen, but if Mozilla can get WebAPI standardized by the W3C other browser makers would likely support it.
While Mozilla's plans for WebAPI are certainly ambitious the company is certainly putting its money where its mouth is—Mozilla is currently hiring several full-time engineers to work on WebAPI.
