Yesterday, I gave a talk on WebSockets at HTML5 WebCamps Belgium.

WebSockets on Fire

While the WebSockets API specification is not stable yet, various browser vendors have already implemented a prototype in their latest browser versions. Microsoft released their WebSockets prototype in December 2010. While there is no native implementation of WebSockets in IE9 just yet, for now they are providing a solution which works cross-browser, relying on a Silverlight client. Server-side a Windows Communication Foundation server is made available, which implements the latest version of the WebSockets protocol.

In this session, Jef covers the WebSockets fundamentals, demonstrates a proof of concept that could be used in various fire department web applications and deep-dives into the code of this proof of concept.

I got a lot of positive feedback on Twitter, which makes me a very happy panda!

You can already find the video of my session on Channel9. The slides can be found on SlideShare.

If you want to play with the demo yourself, you can download the source:

• Make sure your firewall allows incoming TCP traffic on port 4502
• Deploy the client access policy file to IIS
• Also host the Demo.WebSockets.WebClient in IIS

More information on installing the WebSockets prototype here.