HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
The WebSocket Community: It Lives!
We've listed a few reasons to use WebSocket and will explore real, applicable examples of
how you can implement WebSocket yourself. In addition to the wide variety of WebSocket
servers available, the WebSocket community is thriving, especially regarding HTML5
gaming, enterprise messaging, and online chat. Every day, there are more conferences
and coding sessions devoted not only to specific areas of HTML5 but also to real-time
communication methods, especially WebSocket. Even companies that build widely
used enterprise messaging services are integrating WebSocket into their systems.
Because WebSocket is standards-based, it's easy to enhance your existing architecture,
standardize and extend your implementations, as well as build new services that were
previously impossible or difficult to build.
The excitement around WebSocket is also reflected in online communities like
GitHub, where more WebSocket-related servers, applications, and projects are created
hosts a WebSocket server we will use as an example in the subsequent chapters and
that encourage the sharing of all information related to HTML5, including WebSocket.
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Note
More WebSocket servers are listed in Appendix b.
Applications of WebSocket
At the time of writing this topic, WebSocket is being used for a wide variety of
applications. Some applications were possible with previous “real-time” communication
technologies like AJAX, but they have dramatically increased performance. Foreign
exchange and stock quote applications have also benefited from the reduced bandwidth
and full-duplex connection that WebSocket provides. We'll take a look at how you can
examine WebSocket traffic in Chapter 3.
With the increase in application deployment to the browser, there has also been
a boom to HTML5 games development. WebSocket is a natural fit for gaming over the
Web, as gameplay and game interaction are incredibly reliant on responsiveness. Some
examples of HTML5 games that use WebSocket are popular online betting applications,
game controller applications that integrate with WebGL over WebSocket, and in-game
online chat. There are also some very exciting massively multiplayer online (MMO)
games that are widely used in browsers from all types of mobile and desktop devices.
Related Technologies
You may be surprised to learn that there are other technologies that you can use in
conjunction with or as an alternative to WebSocket. The following are a few other
emerging web communication technologies.
Server-Sent Events
WebSocket is a good choice for when your architecture requires bidirectional, full duplex
communication. However, if your service primarily broadcasts or pushes information to
