Mozilla's response to "Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification", June 2020:
> For raw device access as envisioned in a number of APIs (Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, and Web MIDI), the risks of exposing those APIs to users cannot be reasonably conveyed. This is pretty much an intractable flaw of allowing raw, non-semantic access to devices regardless of the protocol used to do so.
> The specific issue is: it's not intuitive that allowing malicious-site.com to access your Bluetooth keyboard might give that site access to your stored passwords, give them the ability to hijack your DNS settings, or allow them to encrypt your hard drive and hold it ransom. And if it's not immediately obvious how those things are possible, that only serves to demonstrate how completely non-intuitive the risks are and how intractable trying to explain them in a permission prompt would be.
WebSerial was just introduced in Firefox 151. It was already available for 5 years in Chromium based browser. It's so new in Firefox that even caniuse is not up-to-date: https://caniuse.com/web-serial.
interestingly, MDN web docs claims at the top of the Web Serial page (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Serial_...) that Chrome does not support it, even though the support table at the bottom shows that it supports all of the features (Firefox doesn't) and has for longer than Firefox
That's because Chrome on Android has a partial implementation of Web Serial. The banner on top is to get information at a glance vs the detailed breakdown of the compatibility table.
Using serial comms from the browser is really important in educational robotics programs. Both First and Vex platforms support it. Kids can access the web based coding environment on their chromebooks, and send code to the robots with a usb cable.
We recently restarted our middle school robotics club. The school had a lot of old Vex EDR equipment for which the coding software is windows only so that really limited what we could do related to coding. Glad to see Firefox getting up to speed on this.
Great to see Firefox getting on board. I wrote an alternative to Arduino's serial plotter that works in Chrome. Hopefully it's not too hard to get Firefox working too? Patches welcome:
Feels a bit out of place that the website tries to aggressively make me download Firefox, with multiple links on the site for it. Like it's the 2000's again and I'd need ActiveX or something. But it's to use a standard.
Sure, the standard is cool, have used it to flash Meshtastic to some LoRa boards, before advancing to use VS Code + ESP-IDF to flash in my own LoRa code.
I used WebSerial + WebSockets during hardware to prototype some connected hardware (on boards that didn’t have WiFi).
Plug in to USB, fire up the web app, and then press a button in NY to light up LEDs in SF – it was exciting stuff!
I never tried actually programming the boards over WebSerial; that obviously opens up many more use cases. I’m thinking about the success that p5.js has had in the creative coding community, largely driven (I think) by a low barrier to entry since it just requires a web browser to get started.
That's a start at improving something. But it won't rid itself of the Playskool/Fisher-Price gimmick factor or have any lasting effect until we can convince JS developers to write their own tools in a standards-compliant dialect and use standardized APIs so that contributors can use the runtime they already have installed instead of being cajoled and browbeaten into installing NodeJS or Bun or Deno or whatever to do what the browser runtime is perfectly capable of: opening a project directory, executing the code comprising the build script, and outputting the build artifacts when it's done.
26 comments:
WebUSB next? I would like to be able to configure my keyboard but it can only be done via their website which requires WebUSB.
Mozilla's response to "Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification", June 2020:
> For raw device access as envisioned in a number of APIs (Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, and Web MIDI), the risks of exposing those APIs to users cannot be reasonably conveyed. This is pretty much an intractable flaw of allowing raw, non-semantic access to devices regardless of the protocol used to do so.
> The specific issue is: it's not intuitive that allowing malicious-site.com to access your Bluetooth keyboard might give that site access to your stored passwords, give them the ability to hijack your DNS settings, or allow them to encrypt your hard drive and hold it ransom. And if it's not immediately obvious how those things are possible, that only serves to demonstrate how completely non-intuitive the risks are and how intractable trying to explain them in a permission prompt would be.
https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/95#iss...
WebSerial was just introduced in Firefox 151. It was already available for 5 years in Chromium based browser. It's so new in Firefox that even caniuse is not up-to-date: https://caniuse.com/web-serial.
(I submitted a PR for caniuse a few days ago :-) https://github.com/Fyrd/caniuse/pull/7523 )
interestingly, MDN web docs claims at the top of the Web Serial page (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Serial_...) that Chrome does not support it, even though the support table at the bottom shows that it supports all of the features (Firefox doesn't) and has for longer than Firefox
That's because Chrome on Android has a partial implementation of Web Serial. The banner on top is to get information at a glance vs the detailed breakdown of the compatibility table.
Edge has had it for a while too.
Woah this is a MASSIVE deviation from FF's previous philosophy on allowing WebSerial. This is a GOOD thing!
WebSerial in Firefox?! Finally! One of the very few things I use chrome for.
Using serial comms from the browser is really important in educational robotics programs. Both First and Vex platforms support it. Kids can access the web based coding environment on their chromebooks, and send code to the robots with a usb cable.
We recently restarted our middle school robotics club. The school had a lot of old Vex EDR equipment for which the coding software is windows only so that really limited what we could do related to coding. Glad to see Firefox getting up to speed on this.
Great to see Firefox getting on board. I wrote an alternative to Arduino's serial plotter that works in Chrome. Hopefully it's not too hard to get Firefox working too? Patches welcome:
https://github.com/skybrian/serialviz
Hopefully it will just work, if not please file a bug! I tested with a variety of hardware and sites but of course I couldn't try everything...
Feels a bit out of place that the website tries to aggressively make me download Firefox, with multiple links on the site for it. Like it's the 2000's again and I'd need ActiveX or something. But it's to use a standard.
Sure, the standard is cool, have used it to flash Meshtastic to some LoRa boards, before advancing to use VS Code + ESP-IDF to flash in my own LoRa code.
What makes it aggressive?
I used WebSerial + WebSockets during hardware to prototype some connected hardware (on boards that didn’t have WiFi).
Plug in to USB, fire up the web app, and then press a button in NY to light up LEDs in SF – it was exciting stuff!
I never tried actually programming the boards over WebSerial; that obviously opens up many more use cases. I’m thinking about the success that p5.js has had in the creative coding community, largely driven (I think) by a low barrier to entry since it just requires a web browser to get started.
On iOS the page promotes the App Store version of Firefox, which is based on WebKit and doesn’t support Web Serial.
Blame Apple for that.
As long as you can download the environment for offline use.
That's a start at improving something. But it won't rid itself of the Playskool/Fisher-Price gimmick factor or have any lasting effect until we can convince JS developers to write their own tools in a standards-compliant dialect and use standardized APIs so that contributors can use the runtime they already have installed instead of being cajoled and browbeaten into installing NodeJS or Bun or Deno or whatever to do what the browser runtime is perfectly capable of: opening a project directory, executing the code comprising the build script, and outputting the build artifacts when it's done.
This is why I use Clojure/ClojureScript to sidestep the issue entirely, while still being able to use the ecosystem if I have to.
Amazing feature for beginners. Is it possible to do this using Arduino?
Yup! Arduino is one of the things I tested with. (I worked on this for Mozilla)
I don’t see why not. https://docs.arduino.cc/libraries/webserial/
The design of this webpage is horrendous.
what the fuck since when they are allowing webserial / webusb?
I've always agreed with the reservations about browsers being able to control peripherals. I'd rather download a python script i can inspect.
You could always just not allow any websites to use these features. They require your permission first.