[PLUG] Web servers, browsers, and OSes

Tom tgrom.automail at nuegia.net
Thu Jun 11 02:46:10 UTC 2020


On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 14:40:05 -0700
wes <plug at the-wes.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 12:38 PM Rich Shepard
> <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 9 Jun 2020, Ben Koenig wrote:
> >  
> > > Browsers typically provide a "user agent" string to the web
> > > server when making requests. This is a human-readable string that
> > > typically  
> > identifies  
> > > your browser, OS, and any other relevant info as deemed
> > > appropriate by  
> > the  
> > > browser. Most browsers offer the ability to modify your user
> > > agent string ("user agent spoofing") to trick websites into
> > > giving you the page for a different browser.  
> >
> > Ben,
> >
> > Good to know. But, is one's UA allows access to multiple pages on
> > the site, but not another one, is that a UA issue? Specifically,
> > after I logged in to the conference web site I could look at the
> > schedule, agendas, and other pages along the menu at the top. But,
> > when looking at the page with the meeting I was to join there was
> > no link 'join meeting,', '+' or other means to do so.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Rich
> >
> >  
> To your question, there are a number of reasons ones' OS might be a
> factor. A big, common one, is related to the technology used to
> capture and transmit the video and audio data. Most pages on a given
> website would use HTML for general functions. But the actual video
> conference would use something very different. Some are fairly open,
> and work well across OSes. But, if a service was still using Flash,
> or Silverlight, or some other less open tech, it could introduce
> compatibility issues. This is because the software the browser uses
> to support them relies on elements of the underlying OS. And that's
> all before we even start thinking about things like plugins or
> extensions interfering.
> 
> If you wanted to investigate further, you could give us more info
> about which service this is and we can check it out.
> 
> -wes
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

Hi Wes, One other thing you might want to consider is how easy or
difficult it is to implement an 'open standard' and how many practical
implementations exist out in the wild already. Currently as far as I am
aware, there are only two practical implementations of a WebRTC client.
Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox. And you could argue that Mozilla
or more or less in Google's pocket. Outside of those two options the
availability of WebRTC implementations is Nil. Please correct me if I
am wrong and there is some conflict of interest free and independent
WebRTC compatible browser rendering engine out there. Firefox is
becoming even less of an option as more time goes by, with them using
their own programming language witch puts an extreme burden on OS
maintainers and packagers, especially the BSDs.

A lot of times when I am building a web application, I will for example
target W3C XHTML instead of WHATWG HTML5 if possible because I am
concerned about future choice of user-agent and the massive reckless
scope of HTML5 causing a monoculture in browsers.

Some of the solutions for video calling I have used is XMPP Jingle
(https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0166.html) and SIP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Initiation_Protocol.

And for audio only while not an IETF standard, has been around with
multiple server and client implementations for decades and is still the
most reliable, resilient, highest quality sounding, portable, simple,
and latent voip software to this day Mumble. https://www.mumble.info/

-- 
 ________________________________________ 
/ Might as well be frank, monsieur. It   \
| would take a miracle to get you out of |
| Casablanca and the Germans have        |
| outlawed miracles.                     |
|                                        |
\ -- Casablanca                          /
 ---------------------------------------- 
\
 \
   /\   /\   
  //\\_//\\     ____
  \_     _/    /   /
   / * * \    /^^^]
   \_\O/_/    [   ]
    /   \_    [   /
    \     \_  /  /
     [ [ /  \/ _/
    _[ [ \  /_/



More information about the PLUG mailing list