A video chat between an Android Nexus tablet and a Macbook Air with no need to download any application? Just a year or two ago, the idea seemed preposterous. Different operating systems that don’t play nice with each other, right?
Wrong, thanks to a technology known as WebRTC, a new-ish standard that is a free, open project that allows high-quality, real-time communication applications to be developed in the browser via simple Java APIs and HTML5. In essence, it’s a technology that makes it much easier to communicate over the Internet on a peer-to-peer basis, allowing Web users to use click-to-text or click-to-call buttons, video conferencing and other Web-based communications technology – with no need to first download an application or a plug-in.
Back in February, we saw the first WebRTC cross-browser chat between Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox, the latest versions of which have WebRTC built in. More recently, the website FreshTilledSoil uploaded a demo video to YouTube that demonstrates how WebRTC can allow some Android device users and Macbook users to engage in video chat. See it below.
Here’s how you do it, according to the FreshTilledSoil.
- If you’re on a laptop, make sure you are running latest production build of Chrome.
- If you’re on a tablet, make sure you are running Android OS and Chrome Beta browser.
- If you’re on a tablet make sure you open up Chrome and go to chrome://flags/, search for “WebRTC” and enable that flag.
So go ahead…chat with your cross-platform friends without the fear that plug-ins will come between you. The next question is…can Android users and Apple adherents really be friends?
Edited by
Braden Becker
