22 July 2010, 10:04

HTML5: Access to cameras and microphones

In the HTML5 development area, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is producing more and more detailed drafts outside of the central specification. A new HTML Media Capture working draft has now been added to allow access to audio, still and video image content in HTML forms.

In April, the Consortium had released a first draft, entitled The Capture API, that describes a programming interface for devices. The new draft, which is considerably shorter than its predecessor, emphasises the connection to HTML by adding the accept attribute to the well-known input element. The permitted values for this attribute are image/*, sound/* and video/*. These elements can be followed by the capture parameter, which accepts the camera, camcorder, microphone and filesystem values. For example, for photo uploads, the corresponding input element would look like this: <input type="file" accept="image/*;capture=camera">.