HTML5 Websocket vs Flex Messaging – The Server Labs Blog

HTML5 Websocket vs Flex Messaging
Jun 9th, 2010
by Kevin McCormack.

Nearly 18 months ago, I wrote an article on this blog which showed how to develop a simple flex web application using ActiveMQ as a JMS server. It has proved a popular article so there must be a fair amount of interest in this topic.

With all the hype surrounding HTML5 at the moment, I figured I’d try to update the application for the HTML5 world, at the same time seeing how easy it would be to replace Adobe Flex. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the fact that Steve Jobs won’t let Flash (and therefore Flex) onto either the iPhone or iPad, so it’s worth investigating if the alternatives (in this case HTML5 websocket) are really up to scratch.

The example shown in the article uses HTML 5 websocket, Apache ActiveMQ, the Stomp messaging protocol and (indirectly) Jetty 7. It currently only runs in Google Chrome 5 since this is the only browser with support for websocket available as of May 2010.