There's no denying it; the concept of Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) is a concept that's shaking the fundamentals of communication to their very core. But there are still some issues separating WebRTC from becoming a true powerhouse in communications, issues that are being rapidly surmounted as recently demonstrated by conversat.io.
The Mozilla Hacks blog, backed up by a set of developers from &yet, recently put together a demonstration version of conversat.io, a program that puts a number of tools related to WebRTC, with a special focus on making it simpler to work with. With conversat.io, users can point a WebRTC-enabled browser--currently limited to Chrome and Firefox's Nightly Channel--to the site, name a chat room once the user arrives, and then use that named room as a venue to host up to six different users in video chat. No logins, no new services, no plug-ins and no installations; just a video chat service right from the browser. Though, for those with Firefox, getting it to run will require a trip to the "about:config" menu to enable "media.peerconnection.enabled" preference to make the whole thing run.
That right there is interesting enough to many, but things only get better when the fullest implications of conversat.io are considered. Not only is this a worthwhile communications tool by itself--getting six people in one room by video with nothing more than a Web browser is a great tool to have on hand--but it also allows for an easy demonstration of the SimpleWebRTC.js library, as well as signalmaster, the signaling server that keeps it all operating.
Some have even compared these two as being, essentially, similar to jQuery, but for WebRTC. Since both libraries come available in open source, and can be found on GitHub for a level of tinkering and improving from there, playing around with the concept is easy enough to do and may yield some valuable results. More information about these tools can be found at the Mozilla Hacks blog.
Right now, WebRTC is a lot more about potential than it is about actual functionality. It's done some very amazing things already, but considering that it's not exactly in wide operation, it's still something that's more of a future development than the kind of thing many are using on a regular basis. Still, it's a start--a great start at that--and everything that's come up so far is merely prologue to a future in which communications will be even easier, and perhaps even more versatile, than they are even now.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
