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Introducing TogetherJS
- aroch 13y agoPrevious discussion (before the official announcement) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6415210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6415210
- mikegioia 13y agoThis looks great but it seems they have no plans to support Internet Explorer (https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support). That's a shame because most of our users who need this level of support all use IE :/
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoYesterday, IE users weren't using TogetherJS, either, and I'm sure you weren't bothered by it at the time.
- mikegioia 13y agoHaha, I'm not really sure what you mean. Yesterday I didn't know TogetherJS was ready to use, and yesterday I didn't know of Mozilla's plan to not support IE. How could anyone be bothered by something before they know about it?
- newsreader 13y agoToday, IE users are not using TogetherJS. And if TogetherJS doesn't get it's act together they won't be using it tomorrow either. I have four browsers installed on my computer and everything I develop has to work on all four; one of them happens to be IE 10.
- meltzerj 13y agoYou should check out our cobrowsing service Firefly (http://usefirefly.com/ http://usefirefly.com/). We provide support all the way back to IE 8.
- tootie 13y agoIE won't support WebRTC anytime soon. That's not these guys fault.
- rallison 13y agoFrom the author: "We do try to throw up appropriate error messages when a browser lacks the necessary support. (WebRTC isn’t required to use TogetherJS, only to use audio chat, so the error message there comes up if you try to activate that function without WebRTC.)" So, the issue is not specifically WebRTC support here. Edit: Also, the official browser support page: https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support So, it could mostly work in IE10, but won't be a development focus.
- Mikeb85 13y agoWho cares. It's IE which needs to catch up to the standards Mozilla and Google are implementing. It's not like Windows users will be left out in the dark, they can always install Firefox. Tell your users to use a real browser, or write a letter to Microsoft telling them to get with the times... Even the University I attend doesn't support IE with their web-apps. They support Firefox...
- ocfx 13y agolol yeah telling our clients to use a real browser is totally going to be good for future business with them..
- Mikeb85 13y agoWhat would you tell someone using Windows 95 who's complaining that your app won't run?
- donalmacc 13y agoDepends how much they're paying me, and when they started paying me that to maintain that app
- mixmax 13y agoThat would depend on how much money they will pay me.
- shurcooL 13y agoThat could be the problem right here. Or it may not be a problem, depends on your values.
- mixmastamyk 13y agoExactly. Note that Mozilla isn't being paid for this tool. It's open source though. So those who require IE support are welcome to pay someone to or add it themselves. Everyone is happy, except those who want goodies for free. ;)
- jmacd 13y agoYou can check out GoInstant as well, which supports IE 8+ http://goinstant.com http://goinstant.com
- mikegioia 13y agoThis looks really awesome!
- newsreader 13y agoBookmarked the site; I will be looking into this one latter on today.
- phowat 13y agoMozilla has a considerable stake on WebRTC's success, and a good way for them to push it's adoption is to help make useful web apps which rely on it. It would be counter productive, and a huge amount of wasted work, for them to support non-webrtc enabled browsers. As someone who is also actively working with the technology and betting on it's success, I'm actually happy they don't support IE/Safari.
- jongalloway2 13y agoYay user agent sniffing: https://twitter.com/jdalton/status/390538182116143105 https://twitter.com/jdalton/status/390538182116143105 "So @togetherjs blocks IE via $.browser.msie. Glad IE11 changed their UA string so it bypasses that nastiness. Works great btw :)"
- ianb 13y agoSpeaking as the principal developer for TogetherJS: In the past we have opted not to work on IE support because we had limited resources, and because we wanted to focus on what we thought were the hard problems: how should the tool act, how do we communicate changes between browsers, how do we integrate with apps, etc. Supporting Internet Explorer was always something we knew we could do, it wasn't a hard problem, but it still required some effort. As such it didn't feel like it was advancing the project. It was never meant as any slight towards IE, just an expedient way to save some time. Also, while we do browser sniffing, we only use that to put up a warning for IE users to alert them that it's not going to work well. This was pointed out on Twitter as though we were actively blocking browsers, in part I think a knee-jerk reaction to browser sniffing, but what we've done still seems to me like a reasonable and responsible thing to do – better to admit you don't support a browser than just expose people to a crappy experience. Of course times change, and as TogetherJS has become a more mature tool it's probably time to revisit our Internet Explorer support. But on the other hand this isn't a commercial tool, so I'm not entirely sure what resources we as a team will be able to invest in Internet Explorer support. But it's also open source, and we would welcome contributions to fix this. We'll be working on a slightly more structured plan soon. It might not even be much work, I really don't know. Here's the bug to watch: https://github.com/mozilla/togetherjs/issues/867 https://github.com/mozilla/togetherjs/issues/867
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mikegioia 13y agoThanks for this response. I think if we implement TogetherJS in our app we'd be doing somewhat-heavy IE testing so in that event we could perhaps send pull requests upstream for any bug fixes.
- beagle3 13y agoWell, maybe you should contact Microsoft and ask them to provide a port or provide similar functionality. Your users have, after all, paid Microsoft for the privilege of using IE.
- newsreader 13y agoLast time I checked IE was free.
- thefreeman 13y agoLast time I checked, it only runs on windows. Which is not free...
- beagle3 13y agoIE is gratis, I know, but trying to run it on either my Linux or my Mac did not work properly.
- newsreader 13y agoToo bad it doesn't support IE10. I was already brainstorming how to implement but will have to wait for something else...
- rallison 13y agoThat isn't entirely true. The audio chat won't work in IE10, and IE10 support isn't a priority, but most everything else will probably work: https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support https://togetherjs.com/docs/#browser-support Edit: Ok, looking at the issues tracker, it looks like the current IE bugs basically break togetherjs on IE10. As such, hopefully this issue gets some attention: https://github.com/mozilla/togetherjs/issues/812 https://github.com/mozilla/togetherjs/issues/812
- ldn_tech_exec1 13y agoThere is a 363 point discussion on this 26 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6415210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6415210
- granttimmerman 13y agoIf only people would search before posting... https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=togetherjs&sortby=create_ts+desc&start=30 https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=togetherjs&sor...
- alecsmart1 13y agoShouldn't HN automatically remove duplicate links? I was surprised to see this on front page again.
- mindcrime 13y agoThere's an age factor. If you submit a duplicate of something from, say, 2 days ago, your submission just turns into a vote for the other submission. But past some threshold (I don't know what it is, and I don't know that anyone other than pg does either), the system allows duplicates. I assume that's by design, as some stories are worth repeat discussions. Indeed, there are a handful of links that have been posted to, and discussed on, HN a half dozen times or more. You can, AFAIK, also "cheat" the dupe detector by adding query string params, and trickery of that nature. I'm guessing substituting the http URL for the https URL (or vice versa) would also work, if they both exist, etc.
- neeee 13y agoThis one is https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/introducing-togetherjs https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/10/introducing-togetherjs, the other is https://togetherjs.com/ https://togetherjs.com/.
- csantini 13y agoJesus, how much I waited for this! :O Literally just deployed, absolutely love it: http://hackurls.com/#&togetherjs=global http://hackurls.com/#&togetherjs=global One liner copy-paste for community on your website. I can finally talk in real time with my users and understand why the use my website.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mntmn 13y agoI am building an actual service using technology like this (but we wrote our own, not TogetherJS). It's cool, but don't forget that this is really a "utility" and it's the mix of factors and features that you build on top of this that make an actual product out of it. I'm currently compiling a (somewhat biased) feature-by-feature comparison on creative realtime collaboration tools. Feel free to comment and suggest more products to compare! https://docs.google.com/a/mnt.mn/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunvDUrA7ThUdHZKcGx2WXZCSjUySWU4TkVreHp2Q2c&usp=drive_web#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/a/mnt.mn/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunvDU...
- aray 13y agoA bit meta, but I think it's really telling that you're using a google doc (also a great collaboration tool) to compare.
- mntmn 13y agoThat's totally intentional, we didn't want to implement a spreadsheet. Yet. ;) I made a list of use cases under the main table that clearly states Google Docs as currently the best tool for tasks like spreadsheets, Word-like document authoring and such. I'm well aware of NIH.
- veganarchocap 13y agoThat's incredible! Already got it working on a project, just... wow!
- nadee013 13y agoThis is a really nice :) Firebase added firebase integration[0] to this, I hope that would be really cool. I'm not there could be an possible integration with Meteor too. [0] - https://github.com/firebase/togetherjs https://github.com/firebase/togetherjs
- ianb 13y agoI'm hoping we turn that Firebase fork into a pluggable interface for TogetherJS to exchange messages via other systems. Once that is in place I'm guessing Meteor would be simple too. Most of the Firebase support is in this one commit, and it's notably pretty small: https://github.com/firebase/togetherjs/commit/fdb11887c633426a39514820baa88438a1d892be https://github.com/firebase/togetherjs/commit/fdb11887c63342...
- arunoda 13y agoThis is nice. I might give this a try around this weekend :)
- hrjet 13y agoWhat worries me, and I realized this only after trying TogetherJS, is that Websockets don't require a special permission in browsers! So any website with JS enabled is now going to be able to do peer-to-peer? Could this be a can of worms, security-wise?
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago1. WebSockets allow real-time client-server communication. They do not allow P2P and have to follow the Same Origin Policy. 2. WebRTC allows P2P. Can't see how it's a security issue.
- esrauch 13y agoWebsockets are not subject to Same Origin Policy. In Firefox it is subject to a "must use wss:// if on a https:// https:// page", but that's all.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoWhere did you get that from? They are indeed subject to it, unless CORS is in effect.
- esrauch 13y agoSorry about the delay, I didn't see your reply until now. I assume you went see mine. If you do a search for "websockets cross origin" every result says they are allowed. I currently have something running that is doing cross domain websockets and it works perfectly fine on FF and Chrome without any special effort.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoAnd if you read each, it says only when using CORS.
- Kiro 13y agoIs WebRTC better for real-time apps (drawing, games) than WebSockets?
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y agoWebRTC is peer-to-peer, WebSocket is client-server. WebRTC might be a better choice for certain types of game.
- drcongo 13y agoAm I the only person that gets an SSL cert mismatch on this site?
- nichol4s 13y agoI'm very excited to see so much enthusiasm for TogetherJS. We are currently building something similar and plan to release that next week. It has lots of similarities but we target a somewhat different market. Some of the differences, you do not need to write a single line of code and it will even work with advanced application that require sign in without sharing security tokens. We plan to release Surfly next week, but people who are interested in trying it out can msg me and can get a beta account.
- filipedeschamps 13y agoHad to be made with Node.js ;)
- createcode1 13y agoNeed IE support please