Boston-based design agency Fresh Tilled Soil has, of late, been immersing itself in the potential of WebRTC.
The company has showcased demos of its video-chat experiments, including a browser-based system that worked across Chrome and Mozilla, and then between tablet and laptop.
The company has now taken things a step further with an embed solution. By copying and pasting a few lines of code, it’s possible to integrate live video chat into any site, with the caveat that the proof-of-concept is currently limited to Google Chrome.
Fresh Tilled Soil tech evangelist Dmitry Dragilev spoke to .net about this latest experiment and why the company is so excited about WebRTC.
.net: Why did you create the embed demo?
DD: When we first released our WebRTC video-chat demo, it proved very popular, but it was a pain for people to have to navigate back to our site just to start a quick video chat. We received many requests for something that could be easily added to any website, took on the challenge, and here we are!
.net: Do you think the embed solution is a good way of raising WebRTC’s profile?
DD: Yes — the real point of all this is to get more people comfortable with using WebRTC video chat, and to get them past a ‘this is a bit too complex because I need to write code and set things up' line of thinking. The embed functionality makes it dead simple for anyone to grab the HTML embed widget code and add video chat to their website or blog. It lowers the bar, enabling anybody to get in on the game, and that kind of functionality is crucial in making WebRTC video chat accessible to more people.
.net: Why are you so interested in WebRTC? What do you believe its significance is for the future of the web?
DD: WebRTC is one of the technologies, which will without doubt transform the web in 2013. The support for this technology only started a few months ago, but when you look at the list of companies building products utilising WebRTC, you can see that it will be a game changer.
This has been a hot topic ever since the famous Hello Chrome/Hello Firefox video. The ability to do video chat natively in the browser without add-ons has sparked a lot of new products and possibilities. Mozilla TowTruck is a great example of a product idea that WebRTC initiated and makes possible. Real-time video chat and collaboration as you code something with someone is a huge leap from the way things are done now. What if you could do the same with any documents, or any type of work you are doing with remote teams? The possibilities are endless and that’s the really exciting part.
