

HTML5 video chat implemented in Webkit GTK - urbanmbeatz
https://labs.ericsson.com/blog/beyond-html5-conversational-voice-and-video-implemented-webkit-gtk

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arfrank
Awesome! While it is still a long way away this is a first step in getting
HTML5 to be a real alternative as a full replacement to native apps for mobile
phones. Obviously optimizations might need to be made for HTML5 to be
comparable in speed to native apps, but imagine mobile applications that are
mainly write once, run on most phones.

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laverick
like J2ME!

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sjtgraham
They also extended Websockets to support binary data. Given the lack of a raw
binary type in Javascript, I am really interested in how this was implemented.

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nkassis
Maybe with this stuff? [http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/FileAPI/#dfn-
readAsBinaryStrin...](http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/FileAPI/#dfn-
readAsBinaryStringAsync)

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carson
This is an interesting experiment and should hopefully encourage other people
to do the same. I wonder if it will push people to think about breaking webkit
out of the browser for certain uses. It would be interesting to see something
like this done with WebGL for a game.

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apgwoz
People have already thought about making regular apps with webkit and other
browser components. In fact, it's a very old idea, but one that we seem to
keep coming back to. I hope to see the trend continue, as I think it'll help
put a stop to these nonsense platforms like AIR and Flash.

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hallz
Getting access to devices client side is definitely going to power the next
wave of innoviation on the web. It will essentially remove much of the
destinction between a web and native app. It will also put standards based
applications on a level playing field with apps using specific API's (eg
iphone apps). Well in my opinion at least :)

The big question is how long will it take for most browsers to support this
kind of functionality.

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danfitch
I would like to use it for <http://www.squarechat.com> I use flash right now
and it just doesn't feel right. It would be great to have support for this
across other browsers too.

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nl
I wrote a flash->HTML shim for webcams. Works ok on Firefox, Webkit has a
memory leak. Details: [http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/12/15/using-flash-to-
shim-a...](http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/12/15/using-flash-to-shim-a-
webcam-to-canvas/)

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legooolas
I hope the irony of including a flash video on the page, to show a video
example, is not lost :)

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grep
Will this work in current browsers?

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arfrank
Not yet. They did mention in the comments that they would try and integrate it
back into webkit.

There is also a link in the comments to a new issue for the chromium project
of them adding in "device" support:
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=55377>

