Next Firefox can detect computer orientation
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET — The upcoming version 3.6 of Firefox will be able to tell if you're listing to starboard—and pass that information along to applications running in the browser.
Context & Ripple Effects
Firefox’s earlier development path included a move toward native-looking interfaces and a phishing shield, extending the browser beyond page rendering into a more integrated client application. Version 3.6 adds another layer by making a device-state signal available to browser applications.
The feature arrives alongside Firefox’s planned WebGL support and amid competition with Chrome, while Firefox had been gaining nearly all browser share lost by Internet Explorer. That makes hardware-aware web applications a product-differentiation issue, not merely a UI experiment.
First-order effects
- Web application developers using Firefox 3.6 can adapt their software to the orientation reported by a user’s computer, making orientation an input available inside the browser.
Second-order effects
- Firefox’s competition with Chrome broadens from speed and interface design to which browser exposes more of the underlying device to web applications, raising the value of comparable platform capabilities.
Third-order effects
- If browsers continue exposing device state alongside graphics features such as WebGL, the browser becomes a more capable application runtime rather than only a document viewer.
The trend: Browser vendors are competing to make web applications more device-aware and application-like through richer built-in platform capabilities.