Microsoft is trying to push for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to officially certify a new standard for web browsers to handle audio and video chat. Today, the company released a "working prototype" of such a system that uses the CU-RTC-Web (Customizable, Ubiquitous Real-Time Communication) standard.
The demo allows users who have a Chrome browser running on Mac OS X to chat with people who run Internet Explorer 10 on Windows. In a blog post, Microsoft said it submitted its API proposal to the W3C in August 2012 and also released revisions to the standard in October 2012.
Microsoft stated:
The proposal generated both positive interest and healthy skeptical concern from working group members. One common concern was that it was too radically different from the existing approach, which many believed to be almost ready for formal standardization.
The "existing approach" is WebRTC, which the W3C has been considering for some time. Microsoft says that WebRTC is , " ... far from complete and stable, and needs considerable refinement and clarification before formal standardization and before it’s used to build interoperable implementations."
CNet.com points out that WebRTC works on both Chrome and Firefox but that the standard doesn"t allow for a video or audio chat to take place between those two browsers.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft