title: Signature capture possible in various mobile web browsers?
body: <p>My company is considering offering a lightweight mobile web site for data entry in the field (we already have a thick-client mobile application).  One hard requirement is that we must be able to capture a signature.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Is there any prior art for capturing a signature, specifically inside a web page running inside a mobile web browser, across a wide variety of mobile devices/web browsers?</strong>  I am only asking for in-browser solutions, not thick-clients.</p>
  
  <p>For obvious reasons, the device would be required to have a touchscreen.</p>
  
  <p>Certainly there are many, many different mobile browsers out there with a wide variety of capabilities.  The ideal solution would support as many browsers as possible and degrade gracefully based on browser capabilities.</p>
  
  <p>I am already aware that certain versions of Flash might provide the drawing APIs needed for something like this, assuming the desired device's browser supports Flash.</p>
  
  <p>I'm also aware of <a href="http://www.bennet-tec.com/btproducts/WebSignature" rel="noreferrer">a third party ActiveX/OCX control for Pocket IE</a> on Windows Mobile devices.  It is necessary for the user to manually download/install the control within the browser before use.  Unfortunate, but acceptable.</p>
  
  <p>I'm not personally aware of many mobile browsers that support hosting a Java applet, but there are probably some.  Again, based on the support for various Java APIs, perhaps this would be a possible avenue.</p>
  
  <p>Javascript <em>could</em> do this, if the engine and processor are robust enough on the device.</p>
  
  <p>Finally, total pipe-dream here, perhaps one could have the user take a picture of a signature using the mobile device's camera on a plain piece of paper and somehow count that as a valid signature.  However, this would produce a bitmap image, as opposed to vectors which I'd likely be collecting in all other instances.  Also, it would be pretty difficult, if not impossible/unreasonable, to integrate the taking of the photo via a camera app and upload that using the web browser app while associating that specific image with the rest of the data being captured.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>