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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."
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
Why do I feel like getting safari on board would be even harder than Microsoft ? Remember, old Steve Jobs' determined fight to not use VP8 - which is the core codec for this ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's a stretch but perhaps now that he's gone some common sense might seep in?
Other than finding each other to start the conversation, I agree. The one thing Skype still has going for it is the directory services.
More to the point it will open up the ability to write skype-like apps for many website, forums, etc.
The security and privacy aspect that skype used to provide has been eroded since Microsoft took ownership, and started routing all calls through their own servers, and refusing to answer questions about monitoring. (One half suspects that Microsoft's ownership was government funded).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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".
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
It certainly is on my Ubuntu 12.04 64bit install :)
its an inherent fear that someone somewhere might share something with someone else, somewhere else and not pay apple.
Now if they can get Safari and Opera on board
You mean this Opera, from a year ago?
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/getusermedia-access-camera-privacy-ui/
I'm not sure if the TFA demo would work in Opera if it didn't specifically sniff for Firefox and Chrome, but be as it may, incomplete or not, getUserMedia() was part of Opera Stable already a year ago. Someone else with more insight into WebRTC will have to say why Opera doesn't work here.
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...)
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."
WebRTC is not "HTML5". It's an ECMAScript API, and you can use it in any ECMAScript environment with the API, including any HTML version, and hopefully, in the future, desktop applications.
Wonder what the public key field is for?