The web already has a user-facing permissions system; it wouldn't be hard to add many of these under that umbrella (USB, Bluetooth, and Sensors stand out as obvious candidates that should've been behind that barrier from the beginning). Battery Status definitely seems pointless overall.
But I don't agree with the overall thesis, that the web fundamentally should not get features like these. Though, obviously, some of these "standards" have been rushed through and poorly executed.
I think for this we can blame Chromium's dominance. As the author said, many of these features were probably motivated by Chrome OS. And the devil's bargain of letting Chromium take such complete control over the web is that Google can strongarm whichever new "standards" they like into the Web.
The standards committee doesn't want WebBatteryStatus? Fine, we'll implement it anyway and now Chrome desktop/mobile, Chromebooks, and Edge will all have it. Sites that want to use it will probably just use it and throw up a "Use Chrome" notification for Firefox and Safari.
But I don't agree with the overall thesis, that the web fundamentally should not get features like these. Though, obviously, some of these "standards" have been rushed through and poorly executed.
I think for this we can blame Chromium's dominance. As the author said, many of these features were probably motivated by Chrome OS. And the devil's bargain of letting Chromium take such complete control over the web is that Google can strongarm whichever new "standards" they like into the Web.
The standards committee doesn't want WebBatteryStatus? Fine, we'll implement it anyway and now Chrome desktop/mobile, Chromebooks, and Edge will all have it. Sites that want to use it will probably just use it and throw up a "Use Chrome" notification for Firefox and Safari.