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In-Depth Information
Using Realtime Web Technologies in Your Apps Now
Although you may not be able to start relying entirely on WebSocket technology for your new web app, there are
a growing number of companies and projects aiming to give you access to realtime web functionality
today
. Their
approaches vary from using (gasp!) Flash
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, which has actually had socket support for years, as a fallback when
WebSockets are not natively available to focusing on the HTTP-based solutions we mentioned earlier.
Some of the options include Socket.io,
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Faye,
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SignalR,
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PubNub,
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Realtime.co,
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and Pusher
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(for a more
comprehensive list of solutions see the Realtime Web Technologies Guide).
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We'll be focusing on using Pusher in this topic.
Summary
Realtime is what's happening now. Using this functionality, we can let the client know that new data is available
without incurring a ton of overhead, which allows us to create apps that give our users live content experiences with
updated information
as it becomes available
instead of after they request updates. More importantly, it lets us build
interactive functionality that provides a much more engaging experience for the users of our applications. This keeps
them coming back for more.
Now that you've seen where realtime comes from, what it means, how it works, and the benefits it provides,
you can start choosing the tools to build your first realtime web application. In the next chapter, we'll discuss all the
component technologies and programming languages you'll be using to build the app.
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