Showcasing Web Capabilities

Compelling web experiences aren’t limited to basic browser capabilities; they can take advantage of their underlying operating system. Web platform APIs expose these capabilities that are the foundation for Progressive Web Apps (PWA)—web applications capable of providing high-quality experiences like platform-specific apps.

In addition, some functionality on the web platform gives access to lower-level features such as access to the file system, geolocation, access to the clipboard, and even the ability to detect gamepads.

This web site is based on the 2022 Capabilities chapter of the Web Almanac, written by me! You can read it here.

Capabilities unlock new possibilities and functionality for developers to take advantage of on the web. This chapter shared eight of the most popular web platform APIs currently being used on the web. It also showcased some of these capabilities used in different web applications. The beauty of the web is that it can use these platform-based functionalities without needing to (necessarily) be installed onto a device or additional libraries and plugins.

Some exciting experiences that utilize the web’s capabilities include What Web Can Do Today? (WWCDT) and Discourse. WWCDT, which uses 38 of the capabilities we track, showcases many Web APIs with a live demo of each API. Discourse provides communities with web forums and uses 14 of the capabilities we track, such as the Badging API, so users can see the number of unread notifications they have.

The Capabilities Project, Project Fugu, allows applications to migrate to the web, removing some barriers associated with platform-specific applications. No need to write “native” code, no need to worry about users having access to the latest updates, and no need to get users to search for and download from your application in app stores. The web, and its capabilities, open up all new possibilities in building compelling experiences for users.

Project Fugu

Many features users expect to belong to platform-specific applications also exist on the web. However, thanks to the Capabilities Project, known by many as Project Fugu, these features exist on the web. Project Fugu is a cross-company effort to bring feature parity to web applications, considering what iOS, Android, or desktop apps can do. Project Fugu works on exposing platform-specific capabilities to the web while maintaining user security, privacy, trust, and the web’s other core tenets.

Project Fugu comprises Microsoft, Intel, Samsung, Google, and many other groups and individuals.

Check out this post on the Chrome Developers blog to learn more about the Capabilities Project.