Firefox is starting to roll out Firefox Hello to more users. Hello is a videochat, very much like our own Talky.
In the WebRTChacks analysiѕ, I described it a small button to your browser that generates a call URL which you can share.
A question by the palava.tv team got me thinking:
What does it take to add such a button to the browser? It turns out to be surprisingly easy. In Firefox, this requires about 15 lines of code. In Chrome, it's even less. Opera just works by repackaging the Chrome extension.
So, because the web we want is not things running in just a single browser we made extensions for:
Each of these extensions adds a small button to your browser UI. Click on that button and a new tab will open that sends you to room on Talky. No need to think of a room name, we're generating a nice and memorable phrase for you!
On the more critical side, Mozila is making a communications choice for their users with Hello.
Hello is not based on an open standard. Now, the current version of Talky isn't either, but you can download both the client and serverside code that powers the current version. (The forthcoming version of Talky is entirely based on open standards, and all of the libraries we've open sourced here.)
To take up the question posed by palava.tv: Mozilla, why don't you allow user choice with the "hello" button? Do we have to ask the European Commission for an opinion?