Re: [whatwg] WebSocket support in HTML5

[ddailey]

Hi Richard,

My apologies for getting involved in a topic I confess to knowing very 
little about (though I would like to be able to have direct client-to-client 
communication for a variety of purposes including gaming and social 
networking), but it seems like the question here is "what does the approach 
you are advocating enable that the approach on the table doesn't do?"  I 
understand that you are saying the approach WHATWG and HTML5 WG have 
undertaken is flawed (and I acknowledge your claim that lots of folks are 
doing it better), but I really don't see what you are hoping to do that 
these folks (whose expertise in such matters I would certainly be willing to 
defer to) will not enable? Are you claiming, for example,  that HTTP 
roundtrips from a server to each client will be intrinsically too slow to 
support such applications as gaming? If so, then it would seem that would be 
a concrete complaint that the advocates of the current proposal could, in 
theory, respond to. The history of the discussion referred to by the link, 
indicates that as James says, the current proposal has undergone numerous 
revisions based on input. Perhaps since you obviously care so much about it, 
you can help the proposal to evolve into something which addresses your 
concerns.

Just the observation of a naive onlooker.

cheers
David



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard's Hotmail" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2008 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: [whatwg] WebSocket support in HTML5


Hi James,

Thanks for the reply.

[1]
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-July/015252.html

My appologies for only having read the first ten years of that thread :-)

Look, I'm not sure exactly what problem you guys are solving with HTML5's
WebSockets but I wish you well. What I and *many* others are looking for 
is
native JavaScript support for Sockets  a la mode de (SUN Java Applets +
Adobe Flex + MIcrosoft Silverlight) that for some strange reason don't 
seem
to be subject to the same imaginary obstacles that are being discussed in
that thread. Please explain what security vulnerabilities et al that 
Adobe,
SUN and Microsoft have foisted upon us that the HTML5 people wish to spare
us from.

If you guys live in a world where nothing but port 80 exists and no one 
with
ever want UDP datagrams (let alone Multicast messages) to their web 
clients
then I have come to the wrong place :-(

What goes up and down the network connection is our business not yours. No
more bollocks protocols!

As I said in the previous post, if you guys want to put a "Frame me like
ASCII" contortion interface/API on top of the JavaScript Sockets (similar 
to
SOAP on HTTP) then go crazy; just don't try to shackle everyone else with
the same restrictions.

Please see the following for examples of what I am talking about: -

http://manson.vistech.net/t3$examples/demo_client_flex.html
http://manson.vistech.net/t3$examples/demo_client_web.html

In both cases the Username is TIER3_DEMO and the password is QUEUE.

Obviously, you can "view source" for the HTML and Javascript and the Java
Applet and MXML source can be found at
http://manson.vistech.net/t3$examples/

Once again, you are not introducing something new, but you *are* 
attempting
to introduce support for a tried and tested architecture and you are 
getting
it hopelessly wrong :-(

Cheers Richard Maher

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Graham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Richard's Hotmail" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2008 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [whatwg] WebSocket support in HTML5


Richard's Hotmail wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been told that this is the correct forum for lobbying/venting 
> about
> html5 changes; I hope that this is correct?

Er, I think it is the correct forum for discussing the spec. I'm less 
sure
that
lobbying/venting are useful forms of discussion.

> My particular beef is with the intended WebSocket support, and
specifically
> the restrictive nature of its implementation. I respectfully, yet
forcefully,
>  suggest that the intended implementation is complete crap and you'd do
> better to look at existing Socket support from SUN Java, Adobe Flex, 
> and
> Microsoft Silverlight before engraving anything into stone!

Nothing is engraved into stone, at least until browsers ship something 
and
are
unable to change it because it would adversely affect their marketshare.
As far
as I am aware there are currently no browser-based implementations of
WebSockets, so it is relatively easy to make changes.

> What we need (and is a really great idea) is native HTML/JavaScript
support
> for Sockets - What we don't need is someone re-inventing sockets 'cos
they think
> they can do it better.

You might find [1] helpful for understanding the rationale behind the
current
WebSockets spec. If you have use cases that cannot be met with the 
current
design, it would be helpful if you could explain the use case and how you
can
deal with the security issues identified in that email.

[1]
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-July/015252.html

--
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead