OneWeb demonstrates the power of XMPP inside the browser

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on November 26, 2009

We have just released an experimental extension for Firefox that adds XMPP interactions to the Mozilla browser.

OneWeb Firefox extension is a good exemple of Firefox hackability and shows how XMPP integration in the browser can bring value for real-time web interactions.

XMPP stands for eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. The protocol is mostly known as an Instant Messaging protocol, but it has actually been designed as a generic messaging protocol that can do much more that chat. OneWeb Firefox extension demonstrates a small part of what you can do when you integrate XMPP by design into the browser behaviour.

Note that this is an early alpha version developed in a few days to demonstrate our purpose. There is still room for many improvements and contributions are of course welcome.

Description

OneWeb alpha version is able to do the following:

  • It gives an interface to interact remotely with your opened Firefox browser. You can interact with opened Firefox from another browser running OneWeb or from an XMPP instant messaging client (supporting adhoc commands). You can thus control your Firefox browser from your desktop or even from a mobile device.
  • It gives a way to share and broadcast your favorite pages with your contact on your XMPP account. Simply click "Share page" in contextual menu and a shared bookmark will be created, distributed to your contact and notified by their OneWeb plugin.
  • It can synchronize your bookmarks with your other Firefox browsers. This feature is experimental. Backup your bookmark before installing OneWeb on your Firefox.

Video

Download

The module can be downloaded from ProcessOne Labs.

Code source is available on ProcessOne Labs.

You need an XMPP account to test this software but you can get a development XMPP account for free on our XMPP Sandbox.

 

Update: We recommand you to use the XMPP Sandbox for ease of use. Your XMPP server needs supports for Pubsub and PEP which is not a common feature.



Categories: Jabber / XMPP  Mozilla  
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Comments

anonymous avatar

Great idea indeed, though I couldn’t get it to work (but my server might have been the culprit here, I’ll look into it later).

Add some Jingle-based TCP tunneling on top of that, and you wouldn’t be that far from an FOSS Opera Unite alternative. But maybe it’s the plan already? ;)

Posted by Olivier M. on 26 Nov 2009 at 16:58



 
anonymous avatar

I also cannot get it to work in FF 3.5.2 or FF 3.6b3.  Boo!

Posted by rjp on 26 Nov 2009 at 17:39



 
Mickaël Rémond's avatar

For those who do not manage to get it work: It might be that your server does not support Pubsub and PEP (Personal Eventing).
Could you please try on the XMPP sandbox for example ?

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on 26 Nov 2009 at 17:44



 
anonymous avatar

have you guys heard of xmpp4moz

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3632
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3633

it was there for ages!!

Posted by Irakli Gozalishvili on 26 Nov 2009 at 20:43



 
anonymous avatar

I tried on the sandbox and that didn’t work either.  However it is working on this FF 3.5.2 from portableapps.com with my server (ejabberd 1.1.1, I think).  It did pop up a box saying my certificate was invalid because it was self-signed though.

On the non-working browser, I get errors from this._trace not being defined but not in this one.  Some weird Javascript strict mode in later versions kicking in?

So now it’s working, how do I make it do clever things?

Posted by rjp on 26 Nov 2009 at 21:07



 
anonymous avatar

Aha, cool, once you get two browsers up and connected, the menu of commands appears.  Very nice.  This is very handy.

Posted by rjp on 26 Nov 2009 at 22:08



 
anonymous avatar

So… any chance we can have access to the git repository the build process is complaining about not finding?
I’d personally also be interested in following the process closer then watching out for new tar-balls to appear.

Posted by Florob on 27 Nov 2009 at 03:00



 
anonymous avatar

Cool, the next step could be saving bookmarks on the xmpp server.

Posted by B on 27 Nov 2009 at 20:35



 
anonymous avatar

quite boring.

Posted by oli on 28 Nov 2009 at 11:24



 
anonymous avatar

I downloaded the source code and tried to build with make:

fatal: Not a git repository: ‘/devel/oneweb’

then I tried to push everything in a git repository by myself.
fatal: cannot describe ‘302210a116b4d6967ac07e2f23b231f060757ec1’

Can we clone from your git repository somewhere ?

Posted by B on 28 Nov 2009 at 11:28



 
anonymous avatar

Looks like OneWeb is sending this to my server:
  <auth >ZkA3ZjAwMDAwMS5vcmc=Zg=Ob3QgcmVhbGx5IG15IHBhc3N3b3Jk</auth>

This is obviously not valid base64. The code, however, looks right to me (but I Am Not A Programmer).

Posted by f on 28 Nov 2009 at 19:11



 
anonymous avatar

Sooo. Could this be built to make a real-nice, decentralised «there’s a new comment on page X» feature?

And/or maybe look that your friends are browsing the same site?

Or for collaboration directly on the pages? Leave comments there etc?

Posted by Odin Hørthe Omdal on 01 Dec 2009 at 12:35



 
anonymous avatar

What’s the advantage about using xmpp for that stuff ? Isn’t HTTP(s) & REST sufficient to do such things ?

Posted by Kaoul on 10 Dec 2009 at 15:46



 
Mickaël Rémond's avatar

@Kaoul: No, HTTP rest is not sufficient. One of the missing thing is that HTTP / Rest is not addressable. You have no address associated to a REST HTTP call.
REST has no real generic push infrastructure per see like pubsub.

Many other differences, that makes XMPP the perfect match for that.

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on 10 Dec 2009 at 15:49



 
anonymous avatar

Have you seen Project Blue Spruce from IBM?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUK4YHXVmM

It uses XMPP in the browser for cooperative JavaScript web applications, plus adds audio/video conferencing.

Posted by Peter Parente on 11 Dec 2009 at 20:24



 
anonymous avatar

Um. I’ve installed One Web. I wasn’t able to log in to my jabberd servers but the xmppsandbox works. Kind of. I’m logged in. It says “OneWeb” at the bottom right corner. If I left-click it - new windows pops up with two tabs - “New Bookmarks” and “All Bookmarks”. Nothing to click there. If I right-click OneWeb I have two options. Logout and Preferences. Doh.

However I wonder - can OneWeb be used to show my other friends some tabs I’m looking at? That would be nice. Some kind of URL feeder.

Posted by ike on 15 Dec 2009 at 22:36



 
Mickaël Rémond's avatar

@ike: You need to:
- Add contacts to your xmpp-sandbox.org accounts (your friends).
- Try using the module with the same account on browser from two locations.

It is not fun if you are alone :)

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on 15 Dec 2009 at 22:38



 
anonymous avatar

I’d personally also be interested in following the process closer then watching out for new tar-balls to appear.

Posted by explore talent on 31 Dec 2009 at 11:17



 
Mickaël Rémond's avatar

As explained on:
http://www.process-one.net/en/blogs/article/oneweb_works_on_firefox_mobile/

Github repository contain the code:
http://github.com/processone/OneWeb

Posted by Mickaël Rémond on 31 Dec 2009 at 11:38



 
anonymous avatar

Um. I’ve installed One Web. I wasn’t able to log in to my jabberd servers but the xmppsandbox works. Kind of. I’m logged in. It says “OneWeb” at the bottom right corner. If I left-click it - new windows pops up with two tabs - “New Bookmarks” and “All Bookmarks”. Nothing to click there. If I right-click OneWeb I have two options. Logout and Preferences. Doh.

Posted by TamDosya on 20 Jan 2010 at 01:31



 

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