Mozilla's WebAPI eyes cross-platform mobile apps

23.08.2011
Mozilla developers are in the early stages of building an open application interface for smartphones and tablets called WebAPI.

The significance of the effort is that WebAPI could become a way for smartphone developers to write one application that would run anywhere, including on Apple's iOS, Windows Mobile and Android devices, at least according to .

The WebAPI project, described as , would be a set of HTML5 Application Programming Interfaces (API) that would provide web-based application interfaces accessible by any HTML5 or tablet.

Richard Tibbett, a platform architect for Opera Software, related to the WebAPI project. The document addresses the messaging technology needed for the process to function.

Tibbett suggested in a message to other developers that his concept for WebAPI would allow "any native app, OS or website to offer its own API...We allow free-market forces to naturally select the best APIs offered for any given problem as they spring up."

"What comes to be most used...is up to the market to decide: millions of Web apps deciding which API's to plug in to...The model works in the interests of a constantly evolving Web," he writes.