h1

Progress towards enabling audio/video conferencing on the Web

October 28, 2011

The Web Real-Time Communications Working Group published the first public Working Draft of WebRTC 1.0: Real-Time Communications Between Browsers yesterday. This publication marks the first milestone to enable audio/video conferencing on the Web.

This work is a joint effort between the W3C WebRTC working group, responsible for the API, and the IETF RTCWEB group, responsible for the protocols. The API described in this first public working draft is incomplete — description of the data channel is missing for instance — and subject to major changes based on the outcome of the (quite lively!) ongoing discussions in both groups.

The W3C WebRTC Working Group will hold its second face-to-face meeting next week during W3C TPAC in Santa Clara, USA. It expects to make progress on privacy and security issues, as well as on finding the right balance between a low-level approach (that would enable interested parties to tweak potentially complex system parameters) and a higher-level API (that Web developers could use without a priori technical knowledge about real-time communications).

The design of the API is based on WebRTC use cases and requirements. We’d like to encourage you to review this document and the first draft of the WebRTC API and to provide feedback to the group on the public-webrtc@w3.org mailing-list (with public archives).

h1

W3C Games Community Group Summit

October 21, 2011

More than 30 participants and counting! The Games Community Group, created in W3C as an outcome of the games workshop in Warsaw, got off to a flying start.

The group will hold a W3C Games Community Group Summit in San Francisco, on 3 November 2011, from 10AM to 1PM, hosted by Zynga. This event, open to anyone, follows the New Game Conference, to be held on 1-2 November. It will be the occasion to refine the scope of the group, nominate a chair, agree on a general roadmap for the group and a list of expected deliverables, and kick-off discussions on additional technical topics, as done in Warsaw. Hope to see you there!

h1

Report on Games workshop published

October 10, 2011

W3C HTML5 logo

Two weeks ago, we had the occasion to join the games community during onGameStart, the first HTML5 Games conference. Speakers at the conference explored many facets of games development using Web technologies, things that work, things that don’t. To explore game developers needs further and gather inputs for HTML.next, we organized a workshop the day after the conference. The workshop report is now available.

Workshop participants included people from Bocoup, Google, Mozilla, RIM, Tecnalia, and Wooga, all passionate about games and Web technologies. During the workshop, more than 20 features that would enable the development of better games using regular Web technologies were reviewed, refined and classified, leading to the identification of 11 new features of particular interest for the games community, namely:

To push for the inclusion of these features within W3C working groups charters, track standardization progress in W3C, and discuss potential other features directly relevant to the development of games using Web technologies, a Games Community Group was proposed and created at the end of the workshop. This group is also to communicate how to build games on the Open Web Platform to the general public.

A community group is a discussion forum open to anyone, without fees, particularly well suited to serve as coordination point for a particular community within W3C. Are you interested in the progress of the Web platform for games development? Join the Games Community group!

Building on the success of this first workshop, we will run a W3C Games Community Group Summit on 3 November 2011, next to the New Game Conference in San Francisco. Stay tuned on the Open Media Web Blog for announcement!

Check the full workshop report for details. Also, if you want to learn more about building games with Web technologies, check and register for the online training course on Game development in HTML5.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.