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Firefox 34 includes WebRTC videochat client “Firefox Hello”

184 points by hobarrera 12y ago

hobarrera 12y ago
Even though the article says firefox beta, this is included in the stable release from today: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/releasenotes/
- 01Michael10 12y ago
  It may be listed as included in the stable release but unless I am blind I don't see chat as an option anywhere????
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683830
maaaats 12y ago
I have to say I don't completely understand the use case for this?
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  You don't understand the use case of a video conferencing program?
  - maaaats 12y ago
    I do, I just don't understand what it has to do with my browser. I also don't understand why my honest question ended up with so many down votes..
    - simlevesque 12y ago
      Let me explain it to you : modern browsers have WebRTC, which enables you to create P2P web pages. Personally I think it is has many real-world use, it will make the web a little less hacky and it will remove some loads on servers which is good. It is a good technology to have in the browser. Now, about Mozilla Hello : The code added to your browser is really really small. In fact it's not much more than address book and a visual signal that you have a conversation going on. All the great stuff is actually on Mozilla's website. They generate a new session for each conversation you start and you just need to go on the site and then you give the url to someone else and they can join the conversation on both Firefox and Chrome. I think that it is a move in the right direction, since they are just adding some sugar to leverage a great web technology that they helped to build and this makes a great showcase of the power of this new technology. I also like it because I trust Mozilla much more than say Hangout or Facebook Messenger. I know that all of my friends use either Chrome or Firefox so there is no barrier. No signup, no installation.
      - hackuser 12y ago
        > enables you to create P2P web pages ... All the great stuff is actually on Mozilla's website. That doesn't sound like P2P. Could Mozilla access call content and metadata? EDIT: Others say it's P2P and end-to-end encrypted; so what does Mozilla's website have to do with it? Can't they at least access metadata?
        simlevesque 12y ago
        The website is just an interface that displays the stream and the webserver only signals user connect and disconnect to every listeners, everything else is P2P.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      > I just don't understand what it has to do with my browser. Your browser, assuming Chrome-based or Firefox-based, already contains ~90% of a video call system in the form of WebRTC. This is Firefox deciding to implement the rest as a bundled extension.
- RollAHardSix 12y ago
  Attack Skype and Attack Facebook Video Chat.
- Ar-Curunir 12y ago
  It's encrypted and p2p, and therefore much better for privacy enthusiasts than most other video conferencing tools.
- nnethercote 12y ago
  It's a video chat client that doesn't require an account on a central server.
fotbr 12y ago
What's wrong with a web browser being just a web browser?
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Nothing, but we long crossed that threshold. The browser has largely usurped the operating system itself for end users (with the nasty side effect that you're no longer relying on self-contained desktop applications, but on entire networks of machines even for the most trivial of tasks), and according to Ohloh/Openhub Chromium is almost as big as the Linux kernel, just a million lines short.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    I think this is the problem with the "hacker" community. They assume because they are happy relying on a browser and who knows how many webapps to get the job that the whole world is too.
- rrradical 12y ago
  Ironically, Phoenix, as Firefox was originally named, was initially created as a slim alternative to the then bloated Mozilla browser. I'm sure we'll see history repeat itself in a few years.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Right, cycles. Firefox was really a slimmer Mozilla, but the web world has changed and Firefox is a vessel for new usages. I wonder what it's descendant will look like though.
  - nly 12y ago
    And Opera, pre-Chromium, included a competent email client, newsgroup reader, FTP client, IRC client, and web browser, all inside a ~4 MB download.
    - gear54rus 12y ago
hayksaakian 12y ago
I see many of you complaining that this should not be built in to Firefox, that it should be a plugin or extension. I disagree for the fundamental reason that there is no realistic way to depose Skype or hangouts with WebRTC unless your thing has absolutely massive adoption (network effect). Now I can trivially video chat with someone who has Firefox, and they don't have to install anything extra. This will push adoption and recognition of webrtc as a technology, and enable competitive WebRTC based platforms to succeed as well.
- ultramancool 12y ago
  For those who really don't want it, I'd recommend Pale Moon. It's an optimized Firefox fork, has x64 builds on Windows and such even. I've made the switch in the past week and it's the most comfortable I've felt with a browser in quite a while. From the developer: > WebRTC. Apart from opening up a whole can of worms security/privacy-wise, "Web Real Time Chat" (comparable with Skype video calls and the likes) is not considered useful or desired functionality for Pale Moon (both according to the developers and the users of the browser at large). This is best left to dedicated programs or at most a browser plug-in. http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    It's worth noting that Pale Moon is actually slower than Firefox stable: http://portableapps.com/node/39509 http://portableapps.com/node/39509 It's also incompatible with many extensions.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      Not to mention it adds another party you have to trust not to insert unwanted/malicious code into your browser. When I get binaries from Mozilla, I only have to trust Mozilla. When I get binaries from my distro's repositories, I only have to trust Mozilla and my distro's maintainers. Both of those are entities I know and trust already, so I'm comfortable with that. But I don't know anything about Pale Moon.
    - 12y ago
higherpurpose 12y ago
I hope Mozilla isn't wasting an opportunity to bring end-to-end videochat encryption to the masses here. I know WebRTC is supposed to be peer-to-peer, but I don't know about how they actually implemented it. So is it end-to-end encrypted? The fact that it's backwards compatible with legacy phone networks already makes me think it's not.
- derf_ 12y ago
  It is. DTLS-SRTP is required for media. The SCTP data channels are also layered on top of DTLS [1]. Now, obviously one "end" might be a conference mixer with unencrypted access to the PSTN, but direct browser-to-browser connections will be encrypted and there is always the DTLS fingerprint to guarantee that you're not being MITM'd. See <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-arch> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-arch> for more information about the security architecture. [1] DTLS is just TLS with the obvious extensions needed to work over UDP instead of TCP.
LukeB_UK 12y ago
This should have been created as an extension or a service that anyone can use, not just Firefox users. My friends are more likely to have Skype or Facebook than use Firefox.
- bigtones 12y ago
  That is short sited. Just because you and your friends won't use it does not mean it should not be included in a product used by hundreds of millions of people in both business and personal applications.
  - LukeB_UK 12y ago
    It's useless if people can't communicate with who they want to. They're more likely to use a service that they won't need to change the environment (browser) that they're used to. You may think I'm short sighted, but you seemed to miss this.
    - ChrisGranger 12y ago
      This service works with any WebRTC-enabled browser, not just Firefox, so people using Chrome/Chromium and derivatives and Opera can use it as well.
  - soylentcola 12y ago
    Not to mention that I'm more likely to use Firefox than to sign up for a Facebook or Skype account. I think one browser (and potentially others) building on a feature is better than requiring someone to sign up for an account on a site/service that they otherwise may not want. Either way, that's just my preference. Facebook and Google and Microsoft are perfectly welcome to build their video chat services on their respective networks and I think that Firefox is also welcome to try to build that functionality into their browser. As long as you can disable it if it causes issues (or better yet, need to enable it with a button making it opt-in rather than opt-out) I'll be glad to check it out and see if it's useful. I remember using AIM and ICQ and other IM programs until Google built chat into the Gmail web interface. Starting that day I moved away from one service and started using another despite the fact that I hadn't really considered the option before. If Firefox's implementation sucks or isn't enough to get people to adopt it (a la Google+ in the minds of most potential users) then nothing will change. If it turns out to be useful and well made then maybe people will find something superior to their current chat platform. That said, I don't think their main roadblock will be resistance to using a particular browser. It will be from people in the general userbase wanting a chat platform that works on mobile as well as in the browser or on the desktop. I use GTalk/Hangouts specifically because it's the same across my home computers, my work computer, my Nexus 5, and my iPad. I know plenty of people who use Facebook or Skype for the same reasons.
securingsincity 12y ago
We may finally be reaching the point where building WebRTC applications are viable options. I've been interested for the last few years and every meetup,conference, document warns about how "we're almost there." This could be a great sign of life for those who have wanted WebRTC adoption for awhile
brooklynberger 12y ago
Looks like we crashed it. I hope the Firefox integration can handle more user than the Tokbox site.
Osmose 12y ago
Repo for the server-side element: https://github.com/mozilla-services/loop-server https://github.com/mozilla-services/loop-server
chatmasta 12y ago
I like Mozilla's new strategy of partnering with popular open source projects, e.g. Tor, now this. It's a good strategy because Mozilla's proprietary competitors, namely Google, might have trouble fully integrating and partnering with open source initiatives. Further, the decision makers of open source projects are presumably far more interested in partnering with Mozilla than Google. There is a lot of value for Mozilla to extract from open source, and as long as it remains an open source company itself, it will have a "leg up" on its competitors, and a much easier time in negotiations with open source stakeholders. I suspect we'll see more integrations of large, popular open source projects into the Mozilla browser.
Confiks 12y ago
So this feature has landed in Firefox 34, but you might not be able to use it yet, because apparently the WebRTC initiator infrastructure that Mozilla uses (Loop) has been rate limited to include only a random 10% of users [1]. If you want to try Talk, and you're eager to 'help' Mozilla stress-test Loop a bit: 1. Go to about:config and set loop.throttled to false 2. Restart Firefox 3. Go to the right 'hamburger' menu, click customize and add Talk to the menu. If Talk doesn't show up, you might need to do a 'Restore defaults' first I just tried it, and it works wonderfully, even on mobile and in an older Firefox version. The noise cancellation is not on par with Skype however. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Load_Handling https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Load_Handling
- padenot 12y ago
  Yep, we have plans to improve the noise and echo cancellation. It kind of works at the moment, but should be much better. Also the quality is not uniform across the platform, which is another thing we want to fix.
  - vr000m 12y ago
    For connectivity and quality issues, we built callstats.js. Which provides google analytics type of service for WebRTC apps. Not only business metrics but analysing ICE connectivity issues and media quality from the stats-api
- tagawa 12y ago
  Thanks for the instructions - works well. In my case the menu item's called "Hello" rather than "Talk".
davidw 12y ago
Speaking of which... I'm going to take a moment to ask a question in the hopes that someone has a suggestion. I want to do something very similar to WebRTC: transport video from a PC to an Android phone, in real time. I need to do it with open source components and standard Android components that can be integrated into an app. I've been fiddling with gstreamer's RTSP server, and... so far no dice. Anyone got something like that functioning?
- woah 12y ago
  Webrtc?
  - davidw 12y ago
    But I don't need all the top layers, the SSL, the handshake... any of it.
enimodas 12y ago
Sadly all the WebRTC implementations I've seen so far require voice and/or video, people who simply want to listen/watch and use text for chatting themselves are not allowed.
kzrdude 12y ago
Is there a good WebRTC app for Android?
- derf_ 12y ago
  Yes. I believe it is called "Firefox".
AdmiralAsshat 12y ago
So since this is evidently going to be baked into the browser, what security measures will be put in place to prevent some nefarious coding from turning on my laptop's webcam as soon as I visit a bogus site? This is not meant to disparage Mozilla, it's honestly the first thing that came to mind when I read the article. EDIT: Why not answer my question instead of simply downvoting me? This is an honest question, coming from a vocal Mozilla supporter.
- bri3d 12y ago
  HTML5 has a provision ( getUserMedia / Stream API ) for accessing the user's webcam and has for some time (supported for at least 2 years in Chrome and quite a long time in Firefox as well). This feature ("Loop") leverages this existing functionality along with WebRTC (a web standard for peer-to-peer real-time streaming between browsers) to create a video chat solution. So, there's no new avenue / attack vector by which a nefarious site could hijack your webcam, as far as I know. The Stream API has required a user affirmation to activate the webcam and mic in both Chrome and Firefox since its introduction.
  - jgrowl 12y ago
    Yeah, it would take a browser vulnerability for sites to just take control without the user accepting access to the camera. In chrome, there isn't even a way for you to accept camera access indefinitely to non-https sites. You will be prompted each and every time.
- moreati 12y ago
  The browser will ask you, before it allows a particular website access to your camera or your microphone https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/cross-browser-camera-capture-with-getusermediawebrtc/#detection https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/cross-browser-camera-captu...
mike-cardwell 12y ago
I assume the video and audio will be transmitted in the clear, over the Internet, without any sort of encryption? Somebody please correct me.
- sirsar 12y ago
  Encryption is part of the WebRTC specification. It is actually impossible to send WebRTC communication in cleartext.
  - mike-cardwell 12y ago
    I am shocked. Thanks for the info.
- morsch 12y ago
  This is the protocol WebRTC uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Securi... I've played around with WebRTC in the past and I didn't know that, they really should be emphasising it more.
- shwetank 12y ago
  Encryption is mandatory for WebRTC. It uses DTLS for it - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347
hendry 12y ago
It's a real shame that they couldn't make a SIP client and leverage VOIP. VOIP is used by a lot of businesses and I believe it would really improve Web adoption if the Web could support it.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  WebRTC is sort of a hack up of SIP-similar technologies, and is definitely VoIP. SIP and SDP are also clusterfucks of protocols with some really, really, terrible design decisions. (Hey, let's specify UDP _AND_ TCP, and require clients to flip between transport on a per-message level! Why not? It's easy to spec idiotic stuff on paper...) Anyways, SIP does not NAT well as it assumes, like it's the 1980s, that you are on a public IP and can directly send to any port on anyone's public IP. Then it goes and embeds your IP all over the place, because they were too cool for simple symmetric pipes. To make it more fun, all sorts of firewall and router vendors try to "fix" SIP and generally just screw things up even more. As I understand, a lot of WebRTC effort went into dealing with NAT and some other niceties. (And apparently, arguing about codecs.) Otherwise, you're right, there's not a whole lot to be done. Despite the terribleness of SIP, it generally works, and VoIP engineers have figured out how to make it work pretty well. However, it's unlikely that re-using parts of SIP/SDP in WebRTC makes _any_ difference in adoption of things. Almost no one runs SIP openly, they lock it down like a traditional telephony system. Best is in fact to firewall it off, because you're rather naive if you trust all this C/C++ code parsing strings like mad. Plus, since SIP systems are often connected to other telephone networks with billing, even protocol-level hackery can lead to a lot of financial loss. So in short, it'd be super duper unlikely you'd ever be able to point your web browser at "sip:someone@somebusiness.com", even if it had SIP built-in.
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    One day I hope someone can call my email address. That's all I want - Google Talk/Hangouts almost had it, then they closed off the protocol.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
EdSharkey 12y ago
This feels very much like a pre-emptive strike by Firefox. I wonder what maneuvering is really going on behind the scenes. Like, is this some nuke-from-orbit reaction by Mozilla and Telefonica to counter Microsoft's WebRTC successor proposal? Is this an attempt to force Microsoft's hand and drive them into Embrace-Extend-Destroy-proof, true 100% backwards compatibility with the simpler WebRTC 1.0 spec? When I saw the over-complexity in that WebRTC 2.0 spec (or ORTC or whatever it will be called) it made my Embrace-Extend-Destroy spidey sense tingle. (Not to mention stoking my centralize-all-the-skype-super-nodes fears for the browser at-large.) Mozilla, even if I'm tilting at windmills here, you are so super! XOXO
bastawhiz 12y ago
So wait...Yahoo! is the default search engine but you can only import contacts for Firefox Hello from Google? I don't even.
dlrush 12y ago
OpenTok -> TokBox -> $50/month. Really? https://tokbox.com/pricing https://tokbox.com/pricing Reminder to self: If a telcom company is involved, a customer pricing bait-and-switch is never very far away. Expounding a bit further, the pricing they are proposing measures usage in 'millions of messages'. Nothing like an arbitrary large metric to confuse consumers about their actual potential usage. How many 'signalling messages' did you use last month fellow consumer?
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  So an open source project is evil because a company is selling it as a service? The pricing structure is obviously aimed at enterprises. The free level includes 7 days of non-stop streaming a month. I don't know anybody who literally spends a quarter of their time on video chat.
  - abcd_f 12y ago
    > So an open source project is evil because a company is selling it as a service? No, not evil. Disingenuous. The O/S project is used as a marketing ploy for the service. There's nothing wrong with it, Google does this all the time, just as many other companies. But if you re-read the press release it really stresses the "we are just like Mozilla" point. They are trying to piggy-back on Mozilla's reputation and borrow its established goodwill as a non-profit, all the while being a commercial entity and having a distinctly different set of interest.
  - throwaway_8272 12y ago
    Is it really a true open source project? I might be blind, but I thought it was only a open API to connect to their services. One couldn't run this without utilizing their servers and services. http://vimeo.com/48983878 http://vimeo.com/48983878 reads like this too, and I can't find out how to setup an open tok media server, either.
bad_user 12y ago
So why doesn't it do text chat as well? I often paste links or other stuff in the middle of a conversation.
vinothtimes 12y ago
this is exciting integration from mozilla, webrtc supports only mozilla and chrome... peer to peer , skype killer

184 points by hobarrera 12y ago

Even though the article says firefox beta, this is included in the stable release from today: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/releasenotes/

01Michael10 12y ago
It may be listed as included in the stable release but unless I am blind I don't see chat as an option anywhere????
- scott_karana 12y ago
  See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8683830

maaaats 12y ago

I have to say I don't completely understand the use case for this?

forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
You don't understand the use case of a video conferencing program?
- maaaats 12y ago
  I do, I just don't understand what it has to do with my browser. I also don't understand why my honest question ended up with so many down votes..
  - simlevesque 12y ago
    Let me explain it to you : modern browsers have WebRTC, which enables you to create P2P web pages. Personally I think it is has many real-world use, it will make the web a little less hacky and it will remove some loads on servers which is good. It is a good technology to have in the browser. Now, about Mozilla Hello : The code added to your browser is really really small. In fact it's not much more than address book and a visual signal that you have a conversation going on. All the great stuff is actually on Mozilla's website. They generate a new session for each conversation you start and you just need to go on the site and then you give the url to someone else and they can join the conversation on both Firefox and Chrome. I think that it is a move in the right direction, since they are just adding some sugar to leverage a great web technology that they helped to build and this makes a great showcase of the power of this new technology. I also like it because I trust Mozilla much more than say Hangout or Facebook Messenger. I know that all of my friends use either Chrome or Firefox so there is no barrier. No signup, no installation.
    - hackuser 12y ago
      > enables you to create P2P web pages ... All the great stuff is actually on Mozilla's website. That doesn't sound like P2P. Could Mozilla access call content and metadata? EDIT: Others say it's P2P and end-to-end encrypted; so what does Mozilla's website have to do with it? Can't they at least access metadata?
      - simlevesque 12y ago
        The website is just an interface that displays the stream and the webserver only signals user connect and disconnect to every listeners, everything else is P2P.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    > I just don't understand what it has to do with my browser. Your browser, assuming Chrome-based or Firefox-based, already contains ~90% of a video call system in the form of WebRTC. This is Firefox deciding to implement the rest as a bundled extension.
RollAHardSix 12y ago
Attack Skype and Attack Facebook Video Chat.
Ar-Curunir 12y ago
It's encrypted and p2p, and therefore much better for privacy enthusiasts than most other video conferencing tools.
nnethercote 12y ago
It's a video chat client that doesn't require an account on a central server.

fotbr 12y ago

What's wrong with a web browser being just a web browser?

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Nothing, but we long crossed that threshold. The browser has largely usurped the operating system itself for end users (with the nasty side effect that you're no longer relying on self-contained desktop applications, but on entire networks of machines even for the most trivial of tasks), and according to Ohloh/Openhub Chromium is almost as big as the Linux kernel, just a million lines short.
- stephenr 12y ago
  I think this is the problem with the "hacker" community. They assume because they are happy relying on a browser and who knows how many webapps to get the job that the whole world is too.
rrradical 12y ago
Ironically, Phoenix, as Firefox was originally named, was initially created as a slim alternative to the then bloated Mozilla browser. I'm sure we'll see history repeat itself in a few years.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Right, cycles. Firefox was really a slimmer Mozilla, but the web world has changed and Firefox is a vessel for new usages. I wonder what it's descendant will look like though.
- nly 12y ago
  And Opera, pre-Chromium, included a competent email client, newsgroup reader, FTP client, IRC client, and web browser, all inside a ~4 MB download.
  - gear54rus 12y ago

hayksaakian 12y ago

I see many of you complaining that this should not be built in to Firefox, that it should be a plugin or extension. I disagree for the fundamental reason that there is no realistic way to depose Skype or hangouts with WebRTC unless your thing has absolutely massive adoption (network effect). Now I can trivially video chat with someone who has Firefox, and they don't have to install anything extra. This will push adoption and recognition of webrtc as a technology, and enable competitive WebRTC based platforms to succeed as well.

ultramancool 12y ago
For those who really don't want it, I'd recommend Pale Moon. It's an optimized Firefox fork, has x64 builds on Windows and such even. I've made the switch in the past week and it's the most comfortable I've felt with a browser in quite a while. From the developer: > WebRTC. Apart from opening up a whole can of worms security/privacy-wise, "Web Real Time Chat" (comparable with Skype video calls and the likes) is not considered useful or desired functionality for Pale Moon (both according to the developers and the users of the browser at large). This is best left to dedicated programs or at most a browser plug-in. http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml http://www.palemoon.org/technical.shtml
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  It's worth noting that Pale Moon is actually slower than Firefox stable: http://portableapps.com/node/39509 http://portableapps.com/node/39509 It's also incompatible with many extensions.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    Not to mention it adds another party you have to trust not to insert unwanted/malicious code into your browser. When I get binaries from Mozilla, I only have to trust Mozilla. When I get binaries from my distro's repositories, I only have to trust Mozilla and my distro's maintainers. Both of those are entities I know and trust already, so I'm comfortable with that. But I don't know anything about Pale Moon.
  - 12y ago

higherpurpose 12y ago

I hope Mozilla isn't wasting an opportunity to bring end-to-end videochat encryption to the masses here. I know WebRTC is supposed to be peer-to-peer, but I don't know about how they actually implemented it. So is it end-to-end encrypted? The fact that it's backwards compatible with legacy phone networks already makes me think it's not.

derf_ 12y ago
It is. DTLS-SRTP is required for media. The SCTP data channels are also layered on top of DTLS [1]. Now, obviously one "end" might be a conference mixer with unencrypted access to the PSTN, but direct browser-to-browser connections will be encrypted and there is always the DTLS fingerprint to guarantee that you're not being MITM'd. See <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-arch> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-security-arch> for more information about the security architecture. [1] DTLS is just TLS with the obvious extensions needed to work over UDP instead of TCP.

LukeB_UK 12y ago

This should have been created as an extension or a service that anyone can use, not just Firefox users. My friends are more likely to have Skype or Facebook than use Firefox.

bigtones 12y ago
That is short sited. Just because you and your friends won't use it does not mean it should not be included in a product used by hundreds of millions of people in both business and personal applications.
- LukeB_UK 12y ago
  It's useless if people can't communicate with who they want to. They're more likely to use a service that they won't need to change the environment (browser) that they're used to. You may think I'm short sighted, but you seemed to miss this.
  - ChrisGranger 12y ago
    This service works with any WebRTC-enabled browser, not just Firefox, so people using Chrome/Chromium and derivatives and Opera can use it as well.
- soylentcola 12y ago
  Not to mention that I'm more likely to use Firefox than to sign up for a Facebook or Skype account. I think one browser (and potentially others) building on a feature is better than requiring someone to sign up for an account on a site/service that they otherwise may not want. Either way, that's just my preference. Facebook and Google and Microsoft are perfectly welcome to build their video chat services on their respective networks and I think that Firefox is also welcome to try to build that functionality into their browser. As long as you can disable it if it causes issues (or better yet, need to enable it with a button making it opt-in rather than opt-out) I'll be glad to check it out and see if it's useful. I remember using AIM and ICQ and other IM programs until Google built chat into the Gmail web interface. Starting that day I moved away from one service and started using another despite the fact that I hadn't really considered the option before. If Firefox's implementation sucks or isn't enough to get people to adopt it (a la Google+ in the minds of most potential users) then nothing will change. If it turns out to be useful and well made then maybe people will find something superior to their current chat platform. That said, I don't think their main roadblock will be resistance to using a particular browser. It will be from people in the general userbase wanting a chat platform that works on mobile as well as in the browser or on the desktop. I use GTalk/Hangouts specifically because it's the same across my home computers, my work computer, my Nexus 5, and my iPad. I know plenty of people who use Facebook or Skype for the same reasons.

securingsincity 12y ago

We may finally be reaching the point where building WebRTC applications are viable options. I've been interested for the last few years and every meetup,conference, document warns about how "we're almost there." This could be a great sign of life for those who have wanted WebRTC adoption for awhile

brooklynberger 12y ago

Looks like we crashed it. I hope the Firefox integration can handle more user than the Tokbox site.

Osmose 12y ago

Repo for the server-side element: https://github.com/mozilla-services/loop-server https://github.com/mozilla-services/loop-server

chatmasta 12y ago

I like Mozilla's new strategy of partnering with popular open source projects, e.g. Tor, now this. It's a good strategy because Mozilla's proprietary competitors, namely Google, might have trouble fully integrating and partnering with open source initiatives. Further, the decision makers of open source projects are presumably far more interested in partnering with Mozilla than Google. There is a lot of value for Mozilla to extract from open source, and as long as it remains an open source company itself, it will have a "leg up" on its competitors, and a much easier time in negotiations with open source stakeholders. I suspect we'll see more integrations of large, popular open source projects into the Mozilla browser.

Confiks 12y ago

So this feature has landed in Firefox 34, but you might not be able to use it yet, because apparently the WebRTC initiator infrastructure that Mozilla uses (Loop) has been rate limited to include only a random 10% of users [1]. If you want to try Talk, and you're eager to 'help' Mozilla stress-test Loop a bit: 1. Go to about:config and set loop.throttled to false 2. Restart Firefox 3. Go to the right 'hamburger' menu, click customize and add Talk to the menu. If Talk doesn't show up, you might need to do a 'Restore defaults' first I just tried it, and it works wonderfully, even on mobile and in an older Firefox version. The noise cancellation is not on par with Skype however. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Load_Handling https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop/Load_Handling

padenot 12y ago
Yep, we have plans to improve the noise and echo cancellation. It kind of works at the moment, but should be much better. Also the quality is not uniform across the platform, which is another thing we want to fix.
- vr000m 12y ago
  For connectivity and quality issues, we built callstats.js. Which provides google analytics type of service for WebRTC apps. Not only business metrics but analysing ICE connectivity issues and media quality from the stats-api
tagawa 12y ago
Thanks for the instructions - works well. In my case the menu item's called "Hello" rather than "Talk".

davidw 12y ago

Speaking of which... I'm going to take a moment to ask a question in the hopes that someone has a suggestion. I want to do something very similar to WebRTC: transport video from a PC to an Android phone, in real time. I need to do it with open source components and standard Android components that can be integrated into an app. I've been fiddling with gstreamer's RTSP server, and... so far no dice. Anyone got something like that functioning?

woah 12y ago
Webrtc?
- davidw 12y ago
  But I don't need all the top layers, the SSL, the handshake... any of it.

enimodas 12y ago

Sadly all the WebRTC implementations I've seen so far require voice and/or video, people who simply want to listen/watch and use text for chatting themselves are not allowed.

kzrdude 12y ago

Is there a good WebRTC app for Android?

derf_ 12y ago
Yes. I believe it is called "Firefox".

AdmiralAsshat 12y ago

So since this is evidently going to be baked into the browser, what security measures will be put in place to prevent some nefarious coding from turning on my laptop's webcam as soon as I visit a bogus site? This is not meant to disparage Mozilla, it's honestly the first thing that came to mind when I read the article. EDIT: Why not answer my question instead of simply downvoting me? This is an honest question, coming from a vocal Mozilla supporter.

bri3d 12y ago
HTML5 has a provision ( getUserMedia / Stream API ) for accessing the user's webcam and has for some time (supported for at least 2 years in Chrome and quite a long time in Firefox as well). This feature ("Loop") leverages this existing functionality along with WebRTC (a web standard for peer-to-peer real-time streaming between browsers) to create a video chat solution. So, there's no new avenue / attack vector by which a nefarious site could hijack your webcam, as far as I know. The Stream API has required a user affirmation to activate the webcam and mic in both Chrome and Firefox since its introduction.
- jgrowl 12y ago
  Yeah, it would take a browser vulnerability for sites to just take control without the user accepting access to the camera. In chrome, there isn't even a way for you to accept camera access indefinitely to non-https sites. You will be prompted each and every time.
moreati 12y ago
The browser will ask you, before it allows a particular website access to your camera or your microphone https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/cross-browser-camera-capture-with-getusermediawebrtc/#detection https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/cross-browser-camera-captu...

mike-cardwell 12y ago

I assume the video and audio will be transmitted in the clear, over the Internet, without any sort of encryption? Somebody please correct me.

sirsar 12y ago
Encryption is part of the WebRTC specification. It is actually impossible to send WebRTC communication in cleartext.
- mike-cardwell 12y ago
  I am shocked. Thanks for the info.
morsch 12y ago
This is the protocol WebRTC uses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Security http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datagram_Transport_Layer_Securi... I've played around with WebRTC in the past and I didn't know that, they really should be emphasising it more.
shwetank 12y ago
Encryption is mandatory for WebRTC. It uses DTLS for it - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6347

hendry 12y ago

It's a real shame that they couldn't make a SIP client and leverage VOIP. VOIP is used by a lot of businesses and I believe it would really improve Web adoption if the Web could support it.

MichaelGG 12y ago
WebRTC is sort of a hack up of SIP-similar technologies, and is definitely VoIP. SIP and SDP are also clusterfucks of protocols with some really, really, terrible design decisions. (Hey, let's specify UDP _AND_ TCP, and require clients to flip between transport on a per-message level! Why not? It's easy to spec idiotic stuff on paper...) Anyways, SIP does not NAT well as it assumes, like it's the 1980s, that you are on a public IP and can directly send to any port on anyone's public IP. Then it goes and embeds your IP all over the place, because they were too cool for simple symmetric pipes. To make it more fun, all sorts of firewall and router vendors try to "fix" SIP and generally just screw things up even more. As I understand, a lot of WebRTC effort went into dealing with NAT and some other niceties. (And apparently, arguing about codecs.) Otherwise, you're right, there's not a whole lot to be done. Despite the terribleness of SIP, it generally works, and VoIP engineers have figured out how to make it work pretty well. However, it's unlikely that re-using parts of SIP/SDP in WebRTC makes _any_ difference in adoption of things. Almost no one runs SIP openly, they lock it down like a traditional telephony system. Best is in fact to firewall it off, because you're rather naive if you trust all this C/C++ code parsing strings like mad. Plus, since SIP systems are often connected to other telephone networks with billing, even protocol-level hackery can lead to a lot of financial loss. So in short, it'd be super duper unlikely you'd ever be able to point your web browser at "sip:someone@somebusiness.com", even if it had SIP built-in.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  One day I hope someone can call my email address. That's all I want - Google Talk/Hangouts almost had it, then they closed off the protocol.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago

EdSharkey 12y ago

This feels very much like a pre-emptive strike by Firefox. I wonder what maneuvering is really going on behind the scenes. Like, is this some nuke-from-orbit reaction by Mozilla and Telefonica to counter Microsoft's WebRTC successor proposal? Is this an attempt to force Microsoft's hand and drive them into Embrace-Extend-Destroy-proof, true 100% backwards compatibility with the simpler WebRTC 1.0 spec? When I saw the over-complexity in that WebRTC 2.0 spec (or ORTC or whatever it will be called) it made my Embrace-Extend-Destroy spidey sense tingle. (Not to mention stoking my centralize-all-the-skype-super-nodes fears for the browser at-large.) Mozilla, even if I'm tilting at windmills here, you are so super! XOXO

bastawhiz 12y ago

So wait...Yahoo! is the default search engine but you can only import contacts for Firefox Hello from Google? I don't even.

dlrush 12y ago

OpenTok -> TokBox -> $50/month. Really? https://tokbox.com/pricing https://tokbox.com/pricing Reminder to self: If a telcom company is involved, a customer pricing bait-and-switch is never very far away. Expounding a bit further, the pricing they are proposing measures usage in 'millions of messages'. Nothing like an arbitrary large metric to confuse consumers about their actual potential usage. How many 'signalling messages' did you use last month fellow consumer?

wodenokoto 12y ago
So an open source project is evil because a company is selling it as a service? The pricing structure is obviously aimed at enterprises. The free level includes 7 days of non-stop streaming a month. I don't know anybody who literally spends a quarter of their time on video chat.
- abcd_f 12y ago
  > So an open source project is evil because a company is selling it as a service? No, not evil. Disingenuous. The O/S project is used as a marketing ploy for the service. There's nothing wrong with it, Google does this all the time, just as many other companies. But if you re-read the press release it really stresses the "we are just like Mozilla" point. They are trying to piggy-back on Mozilla's reputation and borrow its established goodwill as a non-profit, all the while being a commercial entity and having a distinctly different set of interest.
- throwaway_8272 12y ago
  Is it really a true open source project? I might be blind, but I thought it was only a open API to connect to their services. One couldn't run this without utilizing their servers and services. http://vimeo.com/48983878 http://vimeo.com/48983878 reads like this too, and I can't find out how to setup an open tok media server, either.

bad_user 12y ago

So why doesn't it do text chat as well? I often paste links or other stuff in the middle of a conversation.

vinothtimes 12y ago

this is exciting integration from mozilla, webrtc supports only mozilla and chrome... peer to peer , skype killer