Two Google engineers have come up with an interface called WebUSB that allows USB devices to connect to the web. The announcement was made during the World Wide Web Consortium’s Incubator Community Group (W3C WICG).
The engineers said that their WebUSB API allows hardware developers to control USB devices directly from webpages and vice versa to solve the problem of relying on installed software to perform updates and other tasks.
Today when you connect a device to your computer, you hope that somehow it will find the right driver and it will Just Work. For lots of devices it does, because there are standardized drivers for things like keyboards, mice, hard drives and webcams built into the operating system, they said.
The API is intended for hardware like keyboards or other Internet of Things devices.
Security wise, the API contains a protection system that will restrict access to data on your device other than the page being viewed.
More details on the project’s codebase can be found here.
