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TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

austingil.com

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Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#21

Post by Vendan »

recursive wrote: post #13
totetsu wrote: post #9

This is a site that shows the camera feed full screen and inverts in with css https://nega.radioac.dev/ I hacked it together in half an hour to give people a way to look at the uninverted version of my inverted analogue photos with their phones at exhibitions. most people were more excited to play with it on their phone than by the photos I took days making. :'( [edit oops this javascript ]

I'm getting a cert error. Subject is *.fortinet.com, not nega.radioac.dev. Edit, the second: Disregard. It's definitely a corporate middlebox on my end.

fortinet is a cyber security software company, that makes a product called fortigate that does SSL MITM to decrypt and monitor/filter your traffic. Probably want to poke your IT team or get very concerned about your ISP...

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#22

Post by cyral »

hardnose wrote: post #16

Hyper Text Markup Language ...why is a markup language for hypertext able to control my device's camera? Why have all the relevant standards bodies associated with this language and protocol gotten on board with turning a markup display language into a full-blown OS?

It's not really controlling the camera. You need the JavaScript MediaDevices API for that. It just launches the mobile camera and requests that you take a picture, and the picture of never returned to the site until you confirm it. (Similar to any app that shows the "Take a Picture" or "Choose from Gallery" dialog when uploading an image. That is actually the default if you don't specify that the photo should come from the filesystem or camera)

Regarding the web becoming its own OS.. there is no easier way to make cross platform applications these days. If every OS vendor could agree on some standard desktop API, there would be a lot more native apps.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#23

Post by justusthane »

totetsu wrote: post #9

This is a site that shows the camera feed full screen and inverts in with css https://nega.radioac.dev/ I hacked it together in half an hour to give people a way to look at the uninverted version of my inverted analogue photos with their phones at exhibitions. most people were more excited to play with it on their phone than by the photos I took days making. :'( [edit oops this javascript ]

That is awesome! I don’t blame your guests for wanting to play with it :)

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#24

Post by [deleted] »

totetsu wrote: post #9

This is a site that shows the camera feed full screen and inverts in with css https://nega.radioac.dev/ I hacked it together in half an hour to give people a way to look at the uninverted version of my inverted analogue photos with their phones at exhibitions. most people were more excited to play with it on their phone than by the photos I took days making. :'( [edit oops this javascript ]

[deleted]

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#25

Post by [deleted] »

recursive wrote: post #13
totetsu wrote: post #9

This is a site that shows the camera feed full screen and inverts in with css https://nega.radioac.dev/ I hacked it together in half an hour to give people a way to look at the uninverted version of my inverted analogue photos with their phones at exhibitions. most people were more excited to play with it on their phone than by the photos I took days making. :'( [edit oops this javascript ]

I'm getting a cert error. Subject is *.fortinet.com, not nega.radioac.dev. Edit, the second: Disregard. It's definitely a corporate middlebox on my end.

[deleted]

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#26

Post by tialaramex »

Hmm. I couldn't find an indication of whether this requires Secure Context (ie only works with HTTPS or localhost) ?

Secure Context seems (coupled with the permission check) like it's an appropriate requirement here but I didn't see whether it's actually enforced, and obviously as an HTML attribute rather than say a Javascript API it might have been forgotten.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#27

Post by Waterluvian »

A lot of totally valid opinions out there about this, but I personally _love_ how the browser is becoming a very well-featured sandbox for shipping applications.

For personal fun and learning, I'm making a complete 2D video game in ideally less than 1MB. It has 60fps graphics, full spatial audio, and gamepad support, all because the browser has a lot of these APIs that didn't exist when I was starting out my career. The only issue I'm having so far with the user experience is the desire to assume complete control of your keyboard the way a traditional PC game would, because browsers really don't want you to own _every_ key.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#28

Post by onion2k »

hardnose wrote: post #16

Hyper Text Markup Language ...why is a markup language for hypertext able to control my device's camera? Why have all the relevant standards bodies associated with this language and protocol gotten on board with turning a markup display language into a full-blown OS?

I find it incredible that people still think HTML, a spec first published in 1990 when we were using 386s with CGA monitors, shouldn't have evolved to utilise some of the modern features available on today's computers and phones.

Why wouldn't we want to be able to do useful things on the web with our devices?

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#29

Post by Turing_Machine »

hardnose wrote: post #16

Hyper Text Markup Language ...why is a markup language for hypertext able to control my device's camera? Why have all the relevant standards bodies associated with this language and protocol gotten on board with turning a markup display language into a full-blown OS?

That ship sailed about 20 years ago.

Re: TIL: You can access a user’s camera with just HTML

#30

Post by mschuetz »

hardnose wrote: post #16

Hyper Text Markup Language ...why is a markup language for hypertext able to control my device's camera? Why have all the relevant standards bodies associated with this language and protocol gotten on board with turning a markup display language into a full-blown OS?

Because its the securest way we have to launch any app on any device. With binaries, any binary might be malicious and therefore I can only trust and run a very small amount of selected binaries. With web apps, I can launch whatever I want without compromising my system.
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