HTML5 Roundup: Mozilla Demos Standards-Based Video Chat in Firefox

Mozilla recently published a demo of standards-based video chat in an experimental build of Firefox. The functionality is built with the Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC) standard, which aims to support streaming audio and video communication on the Web without relying on plugins. The WebRTC standard is currently in the draft stage, but it has been endorsed by most of the major browser vendors. Some initial components are already available in several browsers.

Ryan Paul has previously written about WebRTC JavaScript APIs that provide programmatic access to a live video stream from the user's webcam. That's obviously just one part of the WebRTC feature set. There are also APIs for establishing peer-to-peer connections for efficiently streaming audio and video. Mozilla's demo shows how those features can be used to implement full video chat in the Web browser with native HTML and JavaScript.