HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
loading and using external 3D assets, so if that is what you are looking for, this might
be your best choice.
Multiplayer Applications with ElectroServer 5
The extended HTML5 specification includes an API for what is known as
WebSockets
. Socket communications allow a client application to remain constantly
connected to a server-aide application. This type of communication can be especially
useful for chat, multiplayer games, e-learning applications, and multiuser whiteboards,
as well as many others. At this point, WebSockets is just a promise with very little
support beyond test and development builds of web browsers. In fact, security concerns
have halted some implementations and slowed others. However, this does not mean
you cannot make use of socket-server applications with HTML5 Canvas.
Because Flash has built-in support for communication via sockets, its applications have
had the ability to open socket communications with server-side applications for many
years. HTML, on the other hand, has never had the ability to reliably communicate to
a socket server without performing some sleight of hand, usually involving constant
polling by the web browser for new information from the web server.
ElectroServer from Electrotank was one of the first reliable socket-server applications
built to communicate with Flash clients. Over the past couple years, ElectroServer has
been updated with APIs for iOS, C#, C++, and now JavaScript. This first iteration of
the ElectroServer JavaScript API does not use WebSockets, but instead implements
JavaScript polling. However, with the availability of ElectroServer's simplified Java-
Script API, you can still start to write multiplayer applications using HTML5 Canvas.
While this portion of the chapter is specific to ElectroServer, many of
the multiplayer/multiuser concepts are applicable to other technologies
as well.
Installing ElectroServer
To get started with multiplayer development using HTML5 Canvas and the Electro-
Server socket server, you first need to download the free, 25-user version of the software
from Electrotank. You can download the appropriate version for your operating system
(Windows, Mac, Linux) at
http://www.electrotank.com/resources/downloads.html
.
There are some installation prerequisites, such as having Java version
1.6. For detailed installation instructions for every OS, visit
http://www
