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My company writes software that installs on client machines to perform point-of-sale transactions. The software interfaces with a variety of external peripherals (receipt printers, bar code scanners, credit-card readers, etc). We do this with a WinForms app that we created in Visual Studio using the Microsoft OPOS library, which in turn communicates with our cloud server.
There are obvious inefficiencies in this model, primarily with updates. I'm researching other ways to communicate with these peripherals over the web, preferably via web browser. So far as I can tell, Java is one of the only technologies out there that can do what we're looking for (via applet), and I assume Adobe Flash can as well (via the Air platform). These are viable, but not preferable because we want to run our software on web-enabled mobile devices.
Does anybody have suggestions for other ways to communicate with external peripherals over the web?
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UPDATE (Jan 16th, 2019): The Credential Management API has been announced. It's currently only supported on Chrome and Opera but it's looking promising. Google Developers wrote an article elaborating on the spec.
UPDATE (Dec 28th, 2016): Another couple years gone, and another update. This one will be more focused on two new developments than anything else. See the new "WebUSB & Web BlueTooth" section under "Full Device API". But the answer remains the same.
UPDATE (Nov 3rd, 2014): It's been just over two years since the original post was made, but the answer remains mostly the same for now. We are, however, closer to your original goal in several areas.
ORIGINAL ANSWER:
There would be a number of ways to go about this.
The HTML5 specification has entered into the "Recommendation" state. This means that HTML5 is pretty much set for what it looks like. However, I will be using HTML5 in the same way that every marketing person in the world has decided is best. That is, I will not be talking about HTML. Well, I will, in so far as you will utilize it from an HTML page, but not really. What I'll actually be discussing is JavaScript (JS) and that's a horse of a different color. But for all intents and purposes, we're putting it all under the same heading as HTML5, which has been decided to mean "shiny and new" now.
Also, the items which I am discussing will vary in support. Some are very browser dependent projects (like Chromium specific implementations), and some are more standards driven projects that may not have browsers implementing or experimenting with them yet. I'll try to distinguish between the two as I go along.
Status: Incoming, but not ready
Being able to access devices from the browser is making slow but steady progress. Right now, many modern browsers have access to some of the more common devices like the camera or gamepads, but they are all high level APIs. Browser vendors, the standards groups, and lots of companies involved with the web are all trying to make webapps just as powerful as your local applications.
But the APIs you are looking for are still in progress and a ways off. For your particular case, and for the more general case of connecting your webapp to most devices, we're still a few years away from something we can use. If you want to see what awesome things are coming up in that field, here are just a select few items that may help you directly:
Originally, Mozilla was pushing a number of these forward because of Boot2Gecko (or Firefox OS). However, with that project officially cancelled, we aren't seeing much progress from them in these areas now.
Members of the Chrome team, however, seem to have decided to dive in and start not only working towards these, but putting them live in browsers. Which leads us to...
Like sausages, it's better to not know how Web Standards are made
-Abraham Lincoln (probably)
There's been a little bit of buzz in this area as it looks like the Chrome team snuck in these as experimental features and developed their own specification for it. Which is great! Just maybe not in the way that you were hoping for.
Each browser vendor and W3C contributor group has their own style and makes contributions towards the specs in their own way. The result is usually a fairly decent specification that the browsers have agreed upon. But getting from nothing to something is... messy. Real messy. And is quite a process a lot of times. It doesn't always result in a good spec (yeah, I'm talking about you Florian compromise...) but even when it does, it takes a while.
However, It seems like Google developed this version of the spec all on their own. And, in my experience, Google's approach to the specs is always a little... well... setting my personal opinions aside we'll say "gung-ho". They tend to just dive right into the deep end. And that seems to be what they've done here.
I highly doubt these specs or implementations will look anything like this when they become standards. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's part of the process. But I wouldn't go relying on this implementation or developing any code or products against it. This is an unprecedented feature on the web and all the browser vendors are gonna want a big say in this.
That said, this is actually good. One of the things Google often does (for better or worse) with situations like this is forces the conversation and it can push things along. And having a feature shipped in the browser, even an experimental feature, can turn up the heat on the demand for it. So we may see more progress in this area soon.
Status: Not fully featured and phone only
Apache Cordova, previously Adobe PhoneGap, is a way to write your program in HTML, CSS, and JS that allows you to access lower level functionality on things like phones, and compile across devices. This would be a way to implement your program, but it would be a phone application, not necessarily a desktop one. An option to consider, and something I figured I would mention.
Cordova implements a few of the above features already, but doesn't have some of the more powerful ones like NFC or BlueTooth.
Status: Possible, but OS specific and desktop app
Windows 8 offers the ability to build applications in HTML and JS. This would allow you to easily access lower level functionality on the OS via their API. From the looks of it, it is pretty extensive and you can do a lot. You mentioned cross OS support, however, and this obviously limits you to one OS.
Status: Dying/Dead, not possible as a web app
Flash won't have direct access to the system through the web. You could create an AIR application, but that will sort of defeat the purpose of having it web based. In addition, Flash support on mobile, and on the web it would seem, is on the decline.
Status: Can be a bit of a pain and only possible as a desktop app
NodeJS and JS applications have sort of been a hot topic the last couple years. I didn't discuss it in my original post because I felt it wasn't quite there yet. However, things have progressed and it is much closer to being ready for this sort of thing, and has the support and power of a growing user base. That said, for your particular case, I wouldn't recommend using it. It would have to be local on the users machine, and because of how NodeJS (and similar engines) are at the moment, it would require a lot of extra configuration and setup that would complicate things a bit.
So you could build an app using HTML, CSS and JS with NodeJS or similar engines and have low level access to what you need, but it has to be local, and it would take more work than I'm sure you want to do every time you'd like to install it for a customer.
So where does that leave us? Well, simple: if you want a single language/set of code as your code base, HTML/CSS/JS aren't a great option... yet. But they could be some day. For now, your options are limited to what you feel is best for your customer. Java is a stable option you listed, but obviously comes with its own drawbacks. As the web develops, I think we'll see a lot of really cool things coming out of the new functionality, but we've got a ways to go still.
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This is possible, but it would have to be done indirectly. In theory, you could write a socket-server in a low level language, which gets I/O, and sends the I/O through the socket (relaying, I guess). HTML5 uses WebSockets, or some equivalent to communicate with this socket-server.
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Now it can be achieved with WebUSB API.
It is available in Chrome since version 54.
It is a W3C editor's draft so we can expect (hope) that it will be adopted by other browser vendors...
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately... have a POS app mostly written in VB6, considering what to do next. HTML5 is an option and I was thinking I'd use VSPE to get the serial stuff into the JS.
http://www.eterlogic.com/Products.VSPE.html
Love this product! Works very well for getting serial traffic where you need it, so I think it would work well, at least as a proof-of-concept to get you going. You'll want to use a combination of "connector" types along with the "tcpclient" and "tcpserver".
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