The simplest Orbited architecture is to have Orbited proxying messages between the TCP server and the browser using socket connections. Many people, however, choose to use web application frameworks like Django or Ruby on Rails because they helpfully abstract away certain cumbersome tasks. You can easily connect Orbited and frameworks using message queue brokers, and the 0.7 release will feature an integrated basic broker.

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Michael and I have recently formed a nonprofit corporation to manage Orbited and related projects such as js.io. One of the main reasons for the nonprofit is so that contributors can sign a Contributor License Agreement (”CLA”) with an appropriate legal entity. The CLAs will protect users of the open source software projects managed by the nonprofit, and are a good reminder to think about intellectual property.

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Orbited 0.6.0 has been released. See the announcements in the Google group and on Comet Daily. Work is now underway on Orbited 0.7.0, which will add two new features: stream multiplexing and integrated message queue (STOMP) server capabilities.

A couple of members of the Orbited team are in Portland for the 2008 OSCON. Michael Carter and Jacob Rus are giving a talk on Wednesday about the recent developments with sockets in the browser and how they’ll make web app development easier and faster. Michael has written two articles for Comet Daily that describe how to use the new HTML5 WebSocket spec:

• Sockets in the Browser
• Independence Day: HTML5 WebSocket Liberates Comet From Hacks

Michael and Jacob will be around after the talk to chat and answer questions.

Update: We’ve scheduled a Comet BoF for Thursday 8p-9p in room E146. Stop by to chat about anything related to Comet.

the revolution
Orbited 0.5 enables a software developer to create robust, performant network applications for the web. If you know one of the common web frameworks, or are already comfortable writing PHP, for example, just download the Orbited client for your preferred language and you’re good to go. However, if you’ve never done any web work before, or are fed up with the traditional approach, you can just bypass the HTTP hacks altogether and instead write your internet application the way folks have been writing network software since the 70s - with a socket.

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Since discussing browser sockets, I’ve been doing some research on other implementations. For some time now, David Davis has had a browser socket with his Sprocket.Socket implementation.

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There is a new tutorial for Orbited 0.5 explaining how to write an IRC client with no server-side code! This is a good introduction to using TCPSocket for implementing clients for other protocols.

I’ve been making various little canvas graphics for an upcoming browser-based pure-JavaScript real-time multiplayer game, and decided to implement some shape primitives. Specifically, I created functions for drawing circles and regular polygons. Then, I decided I could use some curvy and straight stars, and, based on the regular polygon code, made two more functions, regularQuadraticStar and regularStar. Here’s an example of 50 of these shapes drawn on a canvas:

First, and most simply, a circle function. This one is not too much easier than just using the «context».arc function directly, but it makes code a tiny bit clearer, and also saves a couple of lines of code for each circle:

var circle = function (context, x, y, radius) {
  var c = context;
  c.beginPath();
  c.arc(x,y,radius,0,Math.PI*2, true)
  c.closePath();
}

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You may have noticed the lack of a 0.4.x release. We tried to make a number of improvements for 0.4.x, but ultimately we never thought that branch was stable enough to release. The 0.5.0 release, on the other hand, is the most stable and feature-rich version of Orbited yet. This is a pre-announcement that should give you a day or two notice and some information about porting your app to 0.5. You can expect the official release announcement over the next couple of days.

While we still support the old orbited protocol, there are a couple of differences when using Orbited 0.5.x with 0.3.x applications:

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We had a number of technical issues for the past few months. Adrian Weisberg has recently taken over as the administrator and editor of this blog. Now that we’re back on track you can expect blog activity to resume.