14 DAY TRIAL // The web is evolving at a fast pace and brand new APIs and capabilities spring up all the time. One reason for the fast development is that browsers are not waiting for the official standards to come out before adopting features, in fact, the features that browsers start supporting generally get pushed for standardization.
New features come out of needs, mostly, that developers have. If developers find it hard to do this and that, they may push browser makers to create new tools or make them themselves.
But these new tools and capabilities have to be adopted by all if they are to have a chance to survive.
Getting things standardized is a messy business because browser makers and the other stakeholders rarely agree on everything.
Case in point is the FileSystem API, pushed by the Google team. Mozilla's Jonas Sicking has published an article on why FileSystem API is not being supported in Firefox and which are the alternatives to the things that the API accomplishes.
Being that he is the editor for both the IndexedDB and the File API at the W3C and Mozilla's tech lead for the Web API project, which aims to make phone features such as cameras and sensors accessible to web apps, he has a very well-informed opinion on the matter.
And his opinion is that the FileSystem API tries to solve problems that are better handled by existing features while introducing quite a few problems of its own.
For example, one thing that developers want out of the FileSystem API is a way of storing files locally. But he believes that IndexedDB, which is able to store both data and files, is enough for any needs developers may have.
Further, access to local folders, for photos or music, can be accomplished via the DeviceStorage API, part of the Web API project. This though, despite the common misconception, can't be done via the FileSystem API.
There are some developers that would like to do low-level file manipulations, i.e. modify existing files rather than just create new ones or overwrite existing files with newer version. The way the FileSystem API handles this isn't very safe Sicking argues.
He goes into several more details of the FileSystem API and some of Mozilla's alternatives in the blog post. Finally though, he notes that support for IndexedDB is improving in three major browsers, Chrome, Firefox and IE and that, as we mentioned, the upcoming Firefox 16 will ship with IndexedDB unprefixed, meaning that support for it can be considered stable and complete.