I'm thinking of HTML5 media tags. There's a standard way to specify that something is a piece of media to play, but the browser needs to also have the right cod

I'm thinking of HTML5 media tags. There's a standard way to specify that something is a piece of media to play, but the browser needs to also have the right codec for that media. There could be something similar for USB, where there might not even be any "codecs" (drivers) included by default in browsers, but where there's a defined method of making USB devices available. You'd still have to install a plugin for each device type that your browser doesn't natively understand, but standardization for how to make specific device types available to the browser would be much simpler. And there could be "rewriting proxy" drivers available for improved security which limits what requests that are possible, preventing most hardware exploits. Although this might still be too much work for little gain.