The Zinger

Check out this great little demo at http://bloga.jp/ws/jq/wakachi/mecab/wakachi.html

It compares data flow in HTML5 Web Sockets on the one side versus XML HTTP Request on the other. When I ran it, the results were astounding: 565 milliseconds against 31444 millieseconds–wow! The Web Sockets experience is 55 times faster, in part, because there is so much less unnecessary header traffic going over the wire.

Try it in Google Chrome or a nightly build of WebKit (native WebSocket support). The demo is in Japanese, but you’ll get the picture. Waiting for content to render is a pain in any language!

At last, the latest production version of Google Chrome (4.0) on Windows features native HTML5 Web Sockets support. Read more about it on the Google Chrome blog.

Who’s next?

Kaazing is very excited to welcome Yuan Huntington Weigel to the team. Yuan is joining as our new VP of Marketing. In this role, she will help build global awareness of the HTML5 WebSocket standard and Kaazing technology. Read the full press release here.

Over the weekend, Google alerted me about a new Web Sockets plugin for jQuery called jquery-websocket. I am a huge fan of jQuery (of Web Sockets, too, of course, but that goes without saying), so I could not wait to try this one out. As expected, it worked like a charm. Kudos to Shotaro.Tsubouchi for posting this!

Here is what I did:

1. Started the Kaazing WebSocket Gateway demo bundle, which comes with a nifty WebSocket echo server demo that can be accessed at ws://localhost:8001/echo.
   

   Figure 1–Accessing the Kaazing Web Sockets demo (in Firefox, thanks to Kaazing’s Web Sockets emulation!)

2. Copied the example code from the Google code site for jquery-websocket (BTW, why aren’t there any publish dates posted on any of these google code project summary pages?), saved it as jquery-ws.html in the KAAZING_HOME/web directory.
3. Opened the file in a text editor and changed the URL for the WebSocket connection to point to the Kaazing echo demo URL.
   Changed:
   

   var ws = $.websocket("ws://127.0.0.1:8080/", {

   To:

   var ws = $.websocket("ws://localhost:8001/echo", {

4. Opened the Chrome browser (with native WebSocket support) and navigated to http://localhost:8000/jquery-ws.html (files in the KAAZING_HOME/web directory are served up through the Kaazing gateway).
5. Entered some text in the text box and hit enter. It worked! True to jQuery’s slogan “Write less, do more,” the text was sent to the gateway demo service and echoed back, processed, and displayed on the page, with just the following simple lines of code:

   events: {
     message: function(e) { $('#content').append(e.data + '<br>') }
   }

   

   jQuery-based WebSocket app in Google Chrome

Kaazing’s Frank Greco, will be speaking at the Jfokus conference in Stockholm, Sweden. His session, titled “HTML 5 Communications–The New Network Framework for the Web” will kick off at 11:30 a.m.  on Tuesday, January 27th. Don’t miss it!

Frank is the founder of the New York Java Special Interest Group (NYJavaSIG), one of the largest Java Users Groups (JUGs) on the planet. Frank has a long history as a Champion of the Java Platform; he taught a developer track session at the very first “Java Day” back in September 1995 in New York and started the NYJavaSIG that afternoon.

We’re excited to announce that Kaazing opened a new office in London on January first and we’d like to welcome Brad Drysdale and Philip Wye as the first Kaazing employees in the UK! Kaazing is headquartered in Mountain View, California with offices in New York City and now also in London.

New Zingers: Phil Wye and Brad Drysdale

Our London address is:
Kaazing Corporation
Hamilton House
1 Temple Avenue
London EC4Y 0HA
United Kingdom

Here is a nice article about the new and improved (and Kaazing-powered/HTML5 WebSocket-based) Earth Control Facebook application:

http://thescattering.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/conquering-time-and-space-with-a-facebook-app/

Update: check out this great article about HTML5 Web Sockets on John Bergman’s site.

Here is the video from Peter Lubbers’ recent presentation at the Ch’ti Java User Group meeting in Lille, France.

The HTML5 Communication and WebSocket presentations we held in France last week are now online:

• The “In-the-Brain of Peter Lubbers” presentation about Building Real‐Time Applications with HTML5 Web Sockets held at Club Corfair in Paris is now on the Zenika blog
• A review of the Paris session (in French) is now on the Coder’s Breakfast blog
• Slides and photos of the HTML5 Communication and WebSocket presentation are now up on the Ch’ti Java User Group meeting in Lille, France.
• Both events were taped and the videos should be online some time in the near future

Enjoy!

The day after his Paris In the Brain session, Kaazing’s Peter Lubbers will be speaking about HTML5 Communication at the Northern France Ch’ti JUG meeting in Lille, France, hosted by Adeo. At the event, Kaazing will be raffling of an iPod Touch to one lucky attendee (must be present to win). There are still spots available, but they’re going fast, so sign up here.