Stuff that actually needs to go the last mile to the client
behind the firewall/NAT/whatever can use XMPP. But I really see little
reason for webhooks to involve the browser/client ...
I would love to be convinced. I guess the primary advantage is having
direct communication with local apps? What are some great use-cases
for webhooks-to-the-client?
> I like thinking about HTTP POST based messaging (e.g. PubSubHubBub) as a
> good example of why it would be useful. "Last-mile" apps can use XMPP [1],
> but if you could use a single application protocol, with the same semantics,
> all the way from edge to core to edge of the network again, wouldn't you
> want to?
Sure ... and it's roughly the same amount of work to implement reverse
HTTP and XMPP on the client ... but really, I think it will have
trouble being adopted because reverse HTTP is a bit harder to grok
than XMPP conceptually (part of the reason people want to think of
XMPP when presented with the idea of webhooks for the first time).
Plus, while I think these features will find their way to
HTTP/webhooks, things like presence are very useful for non-persistent
client nodes.
> I am, of course, biased ;-) , but to me having a single generic protocol for
> participating bidirectionally in the HTTP ecosystem beats each app developer
> repetitively building ad-hoc solutions to the "last-mile" problem every time
> there is one.
Well if we're talking about an ideal scenario (and I love idealized
design), we could just have IPv6 everywhere and reverse HTTP wouldn't
be necessary. :)
I suppose I'm trying to say I
don't find it central to the power of webhooks.
Not sure what this spec does for the future of webhooks, though.