RTC@Scale 2024 – an event summary
RTC@Scale is Facebook’s virtual WebRTC event, covering current and future topics. Here’s the summary for RTC@Scale 2024 so you can pick and choose the relevant ones for you.
Read MoreMessaging is used too much to stay only in the browser.
There seems to be a few conflicting trends going on at the moment:
This last trend is what I want to focus here. When all of the apps we use are now browser web apps on the PC, there are generally two types of apps I still install on my laptop:
When it comes to communications, though, I prefer pinning tabs to the browser for the most common tasks I have - or just leave it to my phone. WhatsApp, Slack, Gmail - all get a pinned tab on Chrome for me. Whenever I need to use messaging in other domains (Facebook, LinkedIn, Meetup, Upwork, etc) - I just open a new tab in Chrome "on demand" and then close it once done.
I assume others install apps locally on Windows for things they want to use frequently. Which brings me to two interesting developments from the last year or so:
Great.
So we are now taking HTML5 web apps, wrapping them as Windows apps and install them locally.
It probably makes sense for a lot of the enterprise messaging apps - instead of just living inside the browser, be part of the installed set of apps on the desktop. Purists of WebRTC will complain that this is not how its done. Detractors of WebRTC will say it isn't WebRTC at all. I'll say it is just another way of using the technology.
If you want to take your own communication web apps and make a desktop application out of them, then the most popular approach these days that I know of is CEF - Chromium Embedded Framework. It takes your web app, and packages it with Chromium so that they both get downloaded and installed together.
I assume that this is what Slack used. I am not sure about the Facebook Messenger one though - the addition of Windows tiles is a complication, but probably solvable.
In a way, web and HTML5 have already took over our desktop. Even in apps what you get is HTML5 these days.
I wonder if and when will this trend hit mobile, and if so, will it be achieved via the new Progressive Web Apps approach.
RTC@Scale is Facebook’s virtual WebRTC event, covering current and future topics. Here’s the summary for RTC@Scale 2024 so you can pick and choose the relevant ones for you.
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