Archive for May, 2010
HTML5 WebSockets, very cool. (part 1)
I only found out about these at the Future of Web Design on Tuesday. I knew they existed in the spec but had never really investigated what they were or how they worked. Now I know I am excited. It seems they are to web apps what the XMLHTTPRequest was when it started to get used for AJAX. So let’s look at what they are, and then why they can be so beneficial to web development. It’s also worth pointing out at this stage that only Chrome 4+ (I think that version, I’m writing from memory) supports WebSockets natively although apparently Mozilla want to implement them in the next iteration of Firefox (they are already available with an add-on), so don’t expect to be using them in any non-specialist projects just yet.