Live video chat platform, TokBox, was among the first to support WebRTC, launching integration with Google's Chrome, one of the first Web browsers to support the communications standard, earlier in the year.
As such, it should come as no surprise that TokBox today introduced support for Mozilla's Firefox, as the browser recently picked up WebRTC support in its Nightly and Aurora releases.
This means developers using the WebRTC-based OpenTok platform can now write video-enabled apps allowing chatting between desktop users running Chrome or Firefox, as well as between iOS users. In fact, TokBox CEO Ian Small already confirmed that there is a "reasonably stable interop situation" established between Firefox 21 and Chrome 25.
Firefox Nightly builds are extremely early release versions, but it's likely that WebRTC compatibility will appear in an upcoming stable release, possibly 21 or 22, while the current stable release is 19.
TokBox first started working with Mozilla back in November, according to Small. The company received early access to Mozilla's WebRTC implementations, working closely with Mozilla to help stabilize its own implementations of the standard.
Since the OpenTok platform allows developers to ignore different WebRTC implementations on different browsers, it makes it easy to enable cross-browser — even cross-platform — live chatting. Furthermore, the platform offers a number of additional services absent from native WebRTC, such as broadcasting to a large group of viewers and video recording.
As such, OpenTok has attracted a lot of attention and is used today by more than 70,000 organizations, including Major League Baseball, Ford and Bridgestone.
Comparatively, the vanilla WebRTC specification typically only offers one to one chatting. But growth is expected. For example, Small stated that the specification should accommodate alternate video codecs eventually, adding that he believes bandwidth allocation should be a part of the standard, enabling apps to devote more bandwidth to the speaker.
Companies, web application providers, investors and developers looking to gain an even better understanding of all the exciting opportunities WebRTC opens, and more will gather at the WebRTC Conference and Expo from Jun. 25 - 27 in Atlanta, GA.
Edited by
Braden Becker
