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geekuillaume 4 hours ago [-]
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.
peesem 2 hours ago [-]
interestingly, MDN web docs claims at the top of the Web Serial page (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Serial_...) that Chrome does not support it, even though the support table at the bottom shows that it supports all of the features (Firefox doesn't) and has for longer than Firefox
atopal 1 hours ago [-]
That's because Chrome on Android has a partial implementation of Web Serial. The banner on top is to get information at a glance vs the detailed breakdown of the compatibility table.
jononor 8 minutes ago [-]
WebSerial in Firefox?! Finally! One of the very few things I use chrome for.
lxe 2 hours ago [-]
Woah this is a MASSIVE deviation from FF's previous philosophy on allowing WebSerial. This is a GOOD thing!
le-mark 3 hours ago [-]
Using serial comms from the browser is really important in educational robotics programs. Both First and Vex platforms support it. Kids can access the web based coding environment on their chromebooks, and send code to the robots with a usb cable.
We recently restarted our middle school robotics club. The school had a lot of old Vex EDR equipment for which the coding software is windows only so that really limited what we could do related to coding. Glad to see Firefox getting up to speed on this.
skybrian 3 hours ago [-]
Great to see Firefox getting on board. I wrote an alternative to Arduino's serial plotter that works in Chrome. Hopefully it's not too hard to get Firefox working too? Patches welcome:
As long as you can download the environment for offline use.
trainyperson 4 hours ago [-]
I used WebSerial + WebSockets during hardware to prototype some connected hardware (on boards that didn’t have WiFi).
Plug in to USB, fire up the web app, and then press a button in NY to light up LEDs in SF – it was exciting stuff!
I never tried actually programming the boards over WebSerial; that obviously opens up many more use cases. I’m thinking about the success that p5.js has had in the creative coding community, largely driven (I think) by a low barrier to entry since it just requires a web browser to get started.
tech234a 3 hours ago [-]
On iOS the page promotes the App Store version of Firefox, which is based on WebKit and doesn’t support Web Serial.
darkwater 3 hours ago [-]
Blame Apple for that.
singiamtel 5 hours ago [-]
Amazing feature for beginners. Is it possible to do this using Arduino?
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.
cxr 4 hours ago [-]
That's a start at improving something. But it won't rid itself of the Playskool/Fisher-Price gimmick factor or have any lasting effect until we can convince JS developers to write their own tools in a standards-compliant dialect and use standardized APIs so that contributors can use the runtime they already have installed instead of being cajoled and browbeaten into installing NodeJS or Bun or Deno or whatever to do what the browser runtime is perfectly capable of: opening a project directory, executing the code comprising the build script, and outputting the build artifacts when it's done.
arikrahman 2 hours ago [-]
This is why I use Clojure/ClojureScript to sidestep the issue entirely, while still being able to use the ecosystem if I have to.
We recently restarted our middle school robotics club. The school had a lot of old Vex EDR equipment for which the coding software is windows only so that really limited what we could do related to coding. Glad to see Firefox getting up to speed on this.
https://github.com/skybrian/serialviz
Plug in to USB, fire up the web app, and then press a button in NY to light up LEDs in SF – it was exciting stuff!
I never tried actually programming the boards over WebSerial; that obviously opens up many more use cases. I’m thinking about the success that p5.js has had in the creative coding community, largely driven (I think) by a low barrier to entry since it just requires a web browser to get started.
I've always agreed with the reservations about browsers being able to control peripherals. I'd rather download a python script i can inspect.