Summary

In this chapter, you have seen how WebSocket provides a simple, yet powerful mechanism for creating compelling, real-time applications.

First we looked at the nature of the protocol itself, and how it interoperates with existing HTTP traffic. We compared the network overhead demands of current polling-based communication strategies versus the limited overhead of WebSocket.

To illustrate WebSocket in action, we explored a simple implementation of a WebSocket server to show how simple it is to implement this protocol in practice. Similarly, we examined the client-side WebSocket API, noting the ease of integration it provides with JavaScript.

Finally, we walked through a more complex sample application which combined the power of Geolocation with WebSocket to demonstrate how well the two technologies can work together. Now that we've seen how HTML5 brings TCP-style network programming to the browser, we'll turn our attention to gathering more interesting data than just a user's current location. In the next chapter, we look at the enhancements made to form controls in HTML5.