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what the fuck since when they are allowing webserial / webusb? I've always agreed with the reservations about browsers being able to control peripherals. I'd rather download a python script i can inspect.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/web-serial-support-in-fire...
Mozilla's response to "Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification", June 2020: > For raw device access as envisioned in a number of APIs (Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, and Web MIDI), the risks of exposing those APIs to users cannot be reasonably conveyed. This is pretty much an intractable flaw of allowing raw, non-semantic access to devices regardless of the protocol used to do so. > The specif…
Recently I've changed my mind. I've been building a thing using everything in the web platform, even if it is Chrome only and it is great. You can build apps the blend local and remote systems together in ways that make new things possible - and it is on an open-standard runtime.
But as a long time Firefox user I hate that I have to warn people at some critical features won't work.
I think from a platform point of view having features in the web platform that let it compete with other platforms is worth the trade off.
what the fuck since when they are allowing webserial / webusb? I've always agreed with the reservations about browsers being able to control peripherals. I'd rather download a python script i can inspect.
It uses add-on gating similar to what they do for Web MIDI, so it's not exposed to users unless they specifically opt into it. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/web-serial-support-in-fire...
Hopefully they will move to a better solution that offers some integrity guarantees instead, like https://rwc26.waict.dev/ that they have an early implementation of in nightly builds.
what the fuck since when they are allowing webserial / webusb? I've always agreed with the reservations about browsers being able to control peripherals. I'd rather download a python script i can inspect.
Woah this is a MASSIVE deviation from FF's previous philosophy on allowing WebSerial. This is a GOOD thing!
And maybe we'll get web bluetooth too.
Feels a bit out of place that the website tries to aggressively make me download Firefox, with multiple links on the site for it. Like it's the 2000's again and I'd need ActiveX or something. But it's to use a standard. Sure, the standard is cool, have used it to flash Meshtastic to some LoRa boards, before advancing to use VS Code + ESP-IDF to flash in my own LoRa code.
What makes it aggressive?
WebSerial was just introduced in Firefox 151. It was already available for 5 years in Chromium based browser. It's so new in Firefox that even caniuse is not up-to-date: https://caniuse.com/web-serial .
It would not be quite as seamless as having serial support included out of the box in the browser, but couldn't you get most of the way there by writing a native application that provides provides a network interface to the serial ports and then a JavaScript library for use in the browser than talks to that application over the network (maybe even making the JavaScript library API match the Web Serial API so code written for Chromium's actual Web Serial requires little of no porting)?
The native apps for Linux, Windows, and MacOS would be pretty simple, and would be independent of browser vendor or version.
This might even allow some flexibility that serial implemented in the browser doesn't have, such as allowing control of serial ports on a different host.
I'd have expected that when people saw that Web Serial in Chromium opened up some great possibilities for things like browser based Arduino development but other browser makers were not on board someone would had thoughts similar to what I've described.
Does this exist and I just missed it? Is there some major difficulty I've overlooked?
Woah this is a MASSIVE deviation from FF's previous philosophy on allowing WebSerial. This is a GOOD thing!
I hope this signals a departure from us being stuck without web usb in firefox too. It's a shame that I've been stuck using chrome for it. And maybe we'll get web bluetooth too.