Firefox and Chrome Can Talk To Each Other 121
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."
Re:no need of skype (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:So...? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not according to HTML5test.com [html5test.com], they aren't.
Checking caniuse.com [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...)