what can web do today
our lives are lived on the internet fort¥ most of the day now (research cite). as a department focused on building digital products and services, I thought it might be good to talk about our main point of contact to the internet - the web browser.
outside certain programming circles, not many people know that browsers have a powerful set of APIs that enable us to do a lot without requiring our clients to download or install anything.
In short, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are super apps that allow anyone with knowledge of javascript to connect with services like bluetooth, gps, accelerometers, distance sensors, and more - things for which you would assume an app is needed.
Below, I will discuss a subset of APIs that are most interesting to me and have the most potential for creative use cases.
But first, [what is an API[(https://www.notion.so/Integrations-Keys-to-Connecting-Everything-5a1565deea6b43c784c3fe24bdc18c17)? short for Application Programming Interface, you can think of it as the official way to make your code talk to an app and have the app return things to you. unlike RSS feeds, which are one way (read only), APIs are designed by the software owners to allow developers to interact with their software. or "A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together."
Some examples are like Twitter's API, which not only allows you to read tweets, but also perform searches filtered by location, language, and minimum retweets. Google Maps also has interesting APIs that allow you to get turn by turn directions from point A to point B.
The browser, as alluded to before, has in fact a set of APIs that are exposed to developers in the form of javascript functions.
try this with me: go to your chrome browser, and open the developer console. switch to the console tab and type console.log(navigator.connection.effectiveType). congratulations! you have just called your chrome browser's API to get your current connection type!
DISCUSS SOME APIS like bluetooth, device motion, device orientation
Steve Jobs dreamed of a smartphone where all apps are html5 powered websites, with little to no difference between web browsers and phone apps (cite)