Can HTML5 access NFC chips on mobile phones
I'm not too familiar with HTML5 so does anyone know if HTML5 will be able to access NFC chips built into mobile devices? Or, can someone suggest another way to do this using some other method? My goal is to produce a cross platform HTML5 web app that can access NFC functionality on NFC equipped phones. I have looked into mobile frameworks like PhoneGap but although they have NFC on their roadmap, they do not have any timelines nor implementation details to offer.
Thanks.
Answer
NFC access via some proprietary framework may be possible, but I don't think it's currently built into the HTML 5 spec itself.
PhoneGap uses HTML5 for the main UI of the mobile application, and then takes specific code that you write (javascript API I think), which is then translated into native code for each of the mobile devices it is ported to. So, one option you have is building your main UI in HTML5, and then displaying that in a WebView or equivalent inside a native application, then accessing NFC specific features via the native application and passing it to your webapp via a dynamic URL like http://mysampleapp.com/NFC/somestringofdatafromthenfcthatiwillparsetouseinmyhtml5app