Earlier this year, we announced that getUserMedia was the first component of WebRTC to be enabled by default in Firefox and following this we announced WebRTC interoperability with Chrome. getUserMedia allows camera and microphone stream capture.
Now the latest release of Firefox Beta includes the remaining WebRTC components, PeerConnection and DataChannels, on by default. PeerConnection allows the Firefox browser to set up real-time audio/video calls, and DataChannels allow browsers to share almost any kind of data (text, video files, html pages) peer-to-peer, either during or outside a video call, for example, by dragging an item into a chat window. DataChannels are used today to reduce latency in real-time games by allowing gaming apps to connect peer-to-peer. And with WebRTC now on by default in Firefox Beta, developers can test WebRTC much more widely than before because Firefox users won’t have to enable WebRTC in their preferences.
In upcoming releases you can expect to see:
- TURN support — which enables two WebRTC end points to connect even when the NATs at both ends would otherwise cause the call to fail
- Audio/video improvements
- Android support
To test WebRTC now, you can download Firefox Beta here and refer to the WebRTC page on MDN. We’re pleased to turn WebRTC on by default in Firefox Beta and look forward to seeing what innovative apps developers create with it.
Maire Reavy
Product Lead, Firefox Platform Media