Concerning HTML APIs

[webcrab]

I was going over the API portion of the HTML tutorial series and it got me thinking.
I'm just beginning to wrap my brain around programming, and API has been one super ambiguous term I haven't been able to figure out yet. So the way I've come to see it, there are always two parties involved when it comes to API: Platform A (Provider) that delivers some valuable functionality and Platform B (Client) that wants to integrate part of that functionality into their own software. Platform A's developers describe code to be used by outsiders to "program" Platform A's application basically (it's what it says in the abbreviation API, right?). So I do understand what, say, Twitter API or Twilio API looks like. You set up an account with those platforms, they give you credentials to access their services along with the code that can be woven into some external app and so you can enjoy some extra functionality provided by those respective platforms.

When I hear the term "HTML APIs", I get stuck. What are the interacting parties involved here? The tutorials actually describe how to use JavaScript in conjunction with HTML to build some cool features into your web pages. So, as I see it, aforementioned Provider would be JavaScript while Client would be whatever it is that's using HTML. So, by analogy, why isn't it rather JavaScript API as in Twitter API, since the platform delivering those extra perks is actually JavaScript?

I'd appreciate any help I can get figuring out this concept. Thank you!

[Ingolme]

I'm not sure why this is in the HTML tutorial. These are Javascript APIs, not HTML APIs.

In this context, the browser itself is the provider and your Javascript code is the client. The API is the interface through which you request data or a service from the browser.