Elchi3
commented
3 years ago We've met last Wednesday (June 9th, 2021) to assess this project. We think it's suitable for us to work on this topic and it seems reasonably scoped to take on within a quarter. The following priority assessment was made:
Priority assessment
This table checks this project against the OWD prioritization criteria.
| Criteria | Assessment | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Effort | Medium/Large. Comments: For better estimation: Figure out how much data we need where Maybe get a sample data set Need to figure out what this means for BCD first, then how to render it Also, how much is engine data vs browser specific data? Workload can be shared given Facebook can help with the work and other immersive Web folks likely, too |
-2 |
| Dependencies | Figuring out how this fits into BCD Writing WebXR docs (can be a separate project afterwards or in parallel) |
-1 |
| Community enablement | Enables the Immersive Web community | 1 |
| Momentum | High. The core spec is stable, devices become more common in households and the industry | 2 |
| Enabling learners | N/A | 0 |
| Enabling professionals | Medium to high. Professionals need to know the compatibility of XR tech and to what extend features are available | 1,5 |
| Underrepresented topics / ethical web | N/A | 0 |
| Operational necessities | N/A | 0 |
| Addressing needs of the Web industry | We think this addresses needs very much, but no survey or other data points have been presented to show a high demand | 1 |
dominiccooney
JoelMarcey
AdaRoseCannon
WebXR Browser Compatibility
MDN has an essential feature where it provides browser compatibility data for its documented web technologies, including web APIs, JavaScript and HTML. This compatibility is usually represented via a table of browsers, and is essential reading for developers to ensure their apps will be usable across the widest variety of browser platforms.
Currently, the represented browsers in these tables are the common and widely used desktop and mobile browsers. And while this data is of course necessary because of the broad use of these browsers, there are other browser categories that should also be considered when it comes to compatibility.
Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR, collectively “XR”) devices are becoming more common in households and the industry. These devices have web browsers and WebXR provides the functionality and APIs to the web to those devices. In fact, WebXR is becoming so mainstream that MDN is starting to officially document it.
Proposal
Given the increasing use of XR devices, XR should be added alongside desktop and phones in the compatibility tables on MDN. Mozilla Mixed Reality and Facebook’s Oculus Browser are examples of browsers for XR devices which could appear here. We expect browsers which work on desktops and phones, but support XR features, would continue to appear under their primary modality of desktop/phone.
Each browser vendor would provide the necessary data, in the JSON necessary format, to be added to the compatibility repo. And then that data would be exported into the MDN documentation.
The proposal is as follows:
Note: Facebook would like feedback on what level of coverage OWD needs to see for (2).
Facebook has noticed some recent XR features are missing from browser-compat-data. Facebook can update missing XR-specific features as it publishes its compatibility data. This will make it easier for other vendors and community contributors to publish updated compatibility data for XR features in other browsers.