[whatwg] Do we really need a <device> element?

[James Salsman]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 6:36 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>... I [was] persuaded that the device element is
> unnecessary, given recent announcements for the
> accept="...;source=..." type specification proposed by Android and
> Firefox developers.  Does anyone have any reasons to the contrary?

A device element with a type parameter would be useful when the HTML
author is unaware of the target browsers' choice of specific elements
such as embed, object, video, microphone, camera, camcorder etc. to
control placement of, for example, audio volume and recording level
controls, microphone visual feedback, video display viewports, camera
and camcorder viewfinders, etc. for real-time device access, which
does seem to be very reasonable to do in HTML instead of Flash.  Use
cases include teleconferencing, screen grabs (device
type=image;source=desktop?), maybe shared whiteboards (device
type=pointer;source=canvas-id producing coordinate streams and up/down
codes?)  Real-time camcorder upload has as compelling use case as
buffered form-based input type=file accept=video;source=webcam does
under lower bandwidth situations. People will want both, so I am not
ready to write off the device element yet.