It was all the way back in the Spring of 2011 that Google releasedWebRTC，其新生的实时，基于浏览器的HTML5驱动，无俗付的视频聊天项目给公众。在此后的三年半中，互联网工程工作组和W3C一直在努力为标准制定正式，准备稳定的1.0版本，并为黄金时间做好准备。
That prime time has been a long time coming: Plenty of初创公司，其中值得注意的是Vidyo和Twilio，已将WebRTC作为协议，可帮助他们提供来自Google Chrome和Mozilla Firefox等现代浏览器的视频聊天。但是，尽管大型技术供应商提供了他们的支持，指导和代码提交，但很少有人能够真正对此进行任何重大事件。即使是Google也只将其旗舰聊天室消息传递工具从插件更改为今年7月的WEBRTC。
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但是所有这些都在本周发生了变化。它可能与年度相吻合WEBRTC世界会议down in sunny San Jose, but the real WebRTC news came from Microsoft and Cisco, both of which made good on years of promises with the introduction ofSkype for Web和Project Squared, respectively. There's a lot of work left to be done, but it's all starting to come together for WebRTC.
Microsoft's Skype for Web essentially does what it says on the tin: Lets you make and receive voice and video calls from within the browser. Today, it uses a plugin. Soon, Microsoft promises, it'll undergo the full switchover to WebRTC, asMary Branscombe reports for PCWorld. If and when that switchover happens, it'll mark a major validation point as a consumer service that millions of people use and love moves to the WebRTC standard.
Meanwhile, Cisco Project Squared is a collaboration solution designed to marry the new wave of productivity tools (exemplified by offerings from startups like Slack) with the company's expertise in video and audio chat, developed in conjunction with Mozilla. It's the titanic team-up between WebRTC pioneersyoudemanded.
那么花了这么长时间？确实，一个人不仅仅是漫步在用户的浏览器中。WEBRTC标准支持很多事情 - H.264和VP8视频编解码器；视频模拟广播；可扩展的视频编解码器 - 浏览人们实际上在现实生活中使用的情况并不支持全面支持。即使在今天，许多受欢迎的浏览器都支持这些功能。
"No browser today supports a combination of H.264, simulcast and scalable video codecs. Chrome has simulcast and scalable video codecs and even multi-stream video, but it doesn’t have H.264. Firefox supports H.264 but doesn’t support simulcast or scalable video codecs or even multi-stream video. IE recently announced it will support H.264, as well as ORTC which by design supports simulcast and scalable video codecs, but that’s [in the future],” Skype chief architect Bernard Aboba toldPCWorld.
You may notice one major browser completely missing there: Apple. The company has been watching the WebRTC project very closely, says Cullen Jennings, Cisco Engineering Fellow and co-chair of the IETF RTCWeb working group that's helping to define the WebRTC standard. But it has yet to actually commit a line of code or integrate it anywhere, at least that anybody knows, given Apple's usual veneer of secrecy.
詹宁斯说，让所有这些供应商都在同一页面上本身就是一场斗争。IETF和W3C与发布真正开放的解决方案有关，但是关于如何到达那里的意见有所不同。内部戏剧的一个主要来源是要支持哪种视频编解码器：H.264和VP8都提供了合适的性能，但有一些许可问题需要解决，因为它们在技术上都有专有。思科通过释放了通过公司许可的H.264的版本来选择自己的一边，将所有特许权使用费用付诸实践，并为开发人员构建而不必担心削减任何人支票打开大门。
But the opportunity for WebRTC is tremendous, Jennings says. For the first time ever, implementing video and audio in a web app no longer takes expertise in, well, video and audio. Putting WebRTC into a web app just takes some JavaScript know-how.
詹宁斯说：“您可以拥有一支不是专家的小组。”
Moreover, just like any other cloud app, updating a WebRTC app is a matter of refreshing the page. Where before you'd have to juggle software updates, incompatibilities, patch levels, and so on, WebRTC has the potential to work on any device, no matter the form factor or screen size. And we've really only scratched the surface, Jennings says. Once it's that easy to put video and audio into things just by code, the possibilities are limitless: Picture online games that stream video content from your friends while you play, all inside the game.
The challenges are two-fold: Just in terms of marketshare, Jennings says, half of the browsers out there don't support the full potential of WebRTC, and so it's a matter of putting pressure to get those updates out there. The other challenge is developer outreach: Now that WebRTC is nearing 1.0, the time is ripe for developers who are interested in the technology to really dig in and help define the path forward, but so many are choosing to keep working on their proprietary plugins and keep the cycle of endless updates, low performance and system dependencies going.
其他重点领域是视频质量和弹性，但詹宁斯有信心这些是该项目将不断锤击的可解决问题。这只是时间问题 - 就像Microsoft和Cisco真正将其WEBRTC项目发布给世界的时间问题一样。
"The standard's far from done, but it's coming together," Jennings says.