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Firefox and Chrome Can Talk To Each Other
The Firefox and Chrome teams have announced that their respective browsers can now communicate with each other via WebRTC for the purpose of audio and video communication without needing a third-party plugin.
WebRTC is a new set of technologies that brings clear crisp voice, sharp high-definition (HD) video and low-delay communication to the web browser. From the very beginning, this joint WebRTC effort was embraced by the open web community, including engineers from the Chrome and Firefox teams. The common goal was to help developers offer rich, secure communications, integrated directly into their web applications. In order to succeed, a web-based communications platform needs to work across browsers. Thanks to the work and participation of the W3C and IETF communities in developing the platform, Chrome and Firefox can now communicate by using standard technologies such as the Opus and VP8 codecs for audio and video, DTLS-SRTP for encryption, and ICE for networking. To try this yourself, you’ll need desktop Chrome 25 Beta and Firefox Nightly for Desktop. In Firefox, you'll need to go to about:config and set the media.peerconnection.enabled pref to "true." Then head over to the WebRTC demo site and start calling."
Now if they can get Safari and Opera on board it'll be easier to drag Microsoft in kicking and screaming while they go their own way.
The devs probably just got tired of having to download different application/plugins or use flash-interfaces for their favorite live-chat porn sites.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
It is a protocol and API developed at the IETF and W3C for real time communications (RTC) by companies like Google, Mozilla, but also Microsoft.
It's called WebRTC, but it isn't specific to the web. There are also or will be libraries for people who want create desktop or mobile app(lication)s.
You can use it to easily build applications that need some kind of realtime communication like audio- or video-chat.
It uses a peer2peer protocol like VoIP or Skype and encrypted by default.
The peer2peer protocol can also be used for other data and supports NAT-traversal and going through relays.
New things are always on the horizon
this means there is no need of skype.
i tried to read the high level material, but its really not very clear
would it be possible to use this to write a peer-to-peer collaborative application in javascript that just ran
in the browsers of the peers and didn't require a central server for conrdination, say by passing svg?
So will webRTC kill Skype?
(please say yes, please say yes...)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
An excuse for bloat.
I'm going to rip all of this crap out of Firefox and make it just a light, efficient web browser. I shall call it "Phoenix".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In short yes:
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/streaming/screenshare/
New things are always on the horizon
Its hard to tell if you're kidding or not, but on the off chance you aren't, web browsers have been opening sockets to arbitrary end points since the day they were invented.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
A web browser that cherry picks which W3C standards to implement? I think you should call it "Internet Explorer".
Is Chrome 64-bit yet? At least in the beta version??
If only this could be done without using a browswer. Oh, wait....
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Just as a car is for driving. You could try and make a car fly as well, but it will fly only for a few seconds before gravity kicks in.
Same goes for software. Years of experience learned me to prevent this kind of 'additional functionality', also called "function creep". Next to that, I can think up tons of vulnerabilities, such as implanting 'bugs' on pages, analog to a hidden electret mic, or pre recorded spam calls.
Note that I really support this type of innovation, but please, not in browsers.
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
I've been working on a SIP router and using Linphone and Jitsi for testing. I've been working on getting ZRTP (key exchange/validation method for end-to-end encryption using SRTP) working through FreeSWITCH. I haven't gotten the config incantation right yet, but I think I'm close. Seeing this article led me to poke around in WebRTC a bit to see if I should be testing it as well.
I found some info about WebRTC using SDES-SRTP, and maybe that DTLS-SRTP is the new direction, but I haven't figured out how they handle key exchange, or even if they are intended for end-to-end without a trusted MiTM. Does anyone know offhand if WebRTC supports end-to-end? How is key exchange/verification handled with new peers?
Thanks for info or links.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Your tinfoil hat will go batshit-crazy once you learn about web sockets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSocket
Yeah - when the user tells the browser where to go.
Javascript being able to run off and talk to whoever it wants? And that being an expected pattern?.. That's different.
I believe that currently they are more compliant than Firefox.
"It is a protocol and API developed at the IETF and W3C for real time communications (RTC) by companies like Google, Mozilla, but also Microsoft."
Microsoft? Isn't their role to wait until WebRTC starts to catch on and then introduce their own version in a transparent attempt to undermine the standard?
And no, I'm not being facetious - it seems like MS does that with every useful open web technology.
Very funny! :)
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Until NAT is dead (long live IPv6) this thing is not going to be as big as it could be.
Secondly, with regard to port 80, I recall when RoadRunner (TimeWarner Cable) shut off all inbound traffic to port 80 for its residential network. It started when the Code Red virus was making the rounds. Supposedly it was temporary, but if you called to complain, they'd recommend you upgrade to "business class" which was (and is) a ton more expensive.
A friend says they eventually lifted the block but I have never forgiven them.
All I'm saying is: let's not pin our hopes and dreams on the most managed port in the world.
$0.02USD,
-l
/Seriously doubt they'd use port 80 anyway as your local webserver would be listening on that port. :)
//You don't have a local webserver on your machine?
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Yeah - when the user tells the browser where to go.
Its always worked this way. You may tell the browser where you want it to go, but the web page returns content that fetches other content from other sites. (ads, page parts, images, etc) You don't need java script to see this happen. Step into your browser's control panel and turn off Java Script. You barely notice a difference in page presentation.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Could any XMPP client implemented in the browser pull this off?
I don't know, but if so, that would cover all of Google's chat network.
If you don't like it, feel free to continue browsing static HTML pages with your Lynx browser. This is the way the web is moving and it's what most people want. Seriously though, why is JSON in your rant? What could you possibly have against JSON?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
It is a question of how quickly it catches on. If RoadRunner tried blocking Facebook tomorrow, they would have a riot on their hands. On the other hand, if they had blocked access to Facebook from day one, people complaining would have been called whiners. The same for this. If they were to block it from day one, anyone complaining would be told that they were whining because no one uses it anyway. If it got critical mass, the situation changes drastically. It becomes CEOs, TV personalities, grandmas and lawmakers that are the ones complaining. You don't want to be the company that blocks Oprah from calling Martha Stuart on their platform of choice.
And redirects.
And frames.
And autoload.
And on, and on, and on.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Firefox: ~44MB
Chrome: ~96MB
IE: ~20GB and counting
Microsoft? Isn't their role to wait until WebRTC starts to catch on and then introduce their own version in a transparent attempt to undermine the standard?
They've already done that. CU-RTC-Web is their little spanner in the works of compatibility.
"I see that Microsoft decided to wait until the W3C and IETF [standards groups] were close to done before putting together a proposal that, if accepted, would explode most of the current works and create maximal delay on this work," said Cullen Jennings, a Cisco representative on the W3C's Web Real-Time Communications Working Group.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57494622-93/how-corporate-bickering-hobbled-better-web-audio/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Not according to HTML5test.com, they aren't.
Checking caniuse.com and filtering to current browser versions shows FF18 tied with IE10 on HTML/CSS for W3C Recommendations and Proposed Recs. at 100%, with FF18 1% ahead on the Candidate Recommendations and 1% behind for Working Drafts. For the other/unofficial categories, FF18 leads IE10 by a wide margin.
Since those last two categories don't really count for much since they're subject to potentially massive changes, the best you could say is IE 10 is -almost- as compliant as the latest stable Firefox release (which is still saying something, considering how long Microsoft has been the Alabama of web standards integration...)
HTML5 is supposed to be a standard, no? Interoperbility is long overdue. That should have been done in the first place.
lol, i laughed at json as well. It's too efficient! Burn it!
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I recall chatting with some of the Opus developers on IRC about the time this came out. Evidently the story is quite overblown: as I recall this is more a dispute over how "deep" the specification goes (MS [if I'm remembering this correctly] wanted the specifications to specify deeper hooks to the OS or something of the sort) than an outright incompatible difference of opinion.
The context of the conversation at the time was more to do with .opus files in the tag (something Google hasn't even bothered to implement yet, annoyingly, though it ought to happen Real Soon Now) and the possibility that it'll happen in IE at some point, rather than WebRTC, but overall I get the impression that the differences of opinion aren't quite as incompatible or maliciously anticompetetive as, say MS's "OOXML" vs. "ODF".
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Funny, I'm posting this with Firefox and Java Script turned off.
Works fine. In fact I dare say its a little bit faster.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
(MS [if I'm remembering this correctly] wanted the specifications to specify deeper hooks to the OS or something of the sort) than an outright incompatible difference of opinion.
MS wants to block the standard from specifying a common codec. They intend to retain the opportunity to Balkanise online communication by using proprietary codecs that will not be available to all users (eg, Linux), or which will require licensing fees per user.
I get the impression that the differences of opinion aren't quite as incompatible or maliciously anticompetetive as, say MS's "OOXML" vs. "ODF".
Same leopard, same spots.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's called XMLHttpRequest and it's been around for a good while. More recently, we got webSockets.
IE is too much integrated within windows to have a clear vision of its consumption...
<script>
var e = document.createElement("script");
e.src="http://wherever/whatever";
document.appendChild(e);
</script>
Working fine in IE since 1999, and in every browser ever since - not Netscape 4.x though.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
XMLHttpRequest is bound by the same origin policy. It *cannot*call everywhere you want it to, only your domain.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
That is not true.
It can call anywhere, it will just not receive a response if the server does not have any CORS-headers set up.
But anyway, you don't need something as fancy like that. You can do a lot of stuff with just a simple form-POST or loading of an image or sourcing a javascript file from a different domain (there is even a protocol for that).
New things are always on the horizon
The WebRTC protocol supports NAT-traversal based on existing protocols. It works as well (or bad) as things like Skype and so on in that regard.
New things are always on the horizon
Cue the first Zero-day vulnerability in 3...2...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/XMLHttpRequest
XMLHttpRequest.mozSystem -- Read only -- boolean -- If true, the same origin policy will not be enforced on the request.
It is false by default in every release of the browser I could get my hands on.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Ok, my bad, I didn't know about the CORS headers.
Thanks for the info.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
And still CORS headers work just fine in Firefox :-)
New things are always on the horizon
Talk to each other? They virtually are each other!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I should clarify. I just meant that NAT-traversal will only work through a third party, even if you just wanted to direct-dial*. Of course, this is the most likely scenario anyway. Though, if you're a Syrian family member who wants to direct connect to a remote computer to a family member in another
country, you may not want to go through a third party.
-l
*(Technically, you could poke a hole in your firewall and point it at your box, but then it's only your box, not your wife's, kid's, IPad, whatever...)
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I have. No need to sigh! But you can block port 80 entirely or you can filter protocol TCP on port 80. I believe they did the former, not the latter.
If you're talking about browser communication, none of the articles linked said they were using UDP and I wasn't familiar with RTP until I looked it up after you mentioned UDP. So yes, if they don't need a TCP listener on 80, yeah it could work if you're browsing as a privileged user or have [x|r]inetd set up to forward the connection.
-l
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It was meant to be a joke, but apparently noone got that.
Yeah, the GGP must want to revert to the old days of using XML as the standard data interchange format for web services. Why would you want to be able to express objects in a few lines of easy-to-parse Javascript when you could do the same thing with only 30 lines of messy XML?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.