What are APIs?
Application Programming Interfaces
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a software interface that exposes access to some internal functionality of a piece of software for use by programmers, to get access to specific information, to trigger special behavior, or to perform some other action. The APIs that the WebApps WG develops are typically client-side script APIs, for use in browsers and similar user agents (as opposed to server-side APIs, for example).
What are Widgets?
Standalone Web Apps
The word widget is used to mean many things, from a form control to a particular piece of interactive software in a larger application. A W3C Widget is specifically a packaged web application of any degree of complexity, from a simple form to a shared calendar to a game to a full-blown productivity application. W3C Widgets are made using the same technologies as regular applications, such as HTML, CSS, SVG, and Javascript, with all the resources packaged up in a zip file, to be run on your desktop or mobile device (or on a server), with all the same functionality that you expect from a webapp, including server access. When a user gives permission, Widgets also have access to local system resources, as well, just like a local application.
The W3C Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group is chartered to develop specifications for webapps, including standard APIs for client-side development, and a packaging format for installable webapps. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer web applications .
This group works in public, with details in the WG's Work Mode document and the WG's Wiki .
A detailed list of this group's publications and their status (available in one of the W3C's CVS or Mercurial systems.)
The W3C Team Contact for the WebApps Working Group is
Yves Lafon .
The Co-Chairs of the Working Group are
Art Barstow and
Charles McCathieNevile .
Upcoming Meetings
The WebApps WG will have a face-to-face meeting in San Jose (CA, USA) on Thursday April 25 and Friday April 26 2013.
