Standardized a decade ago through RFC 6455, WebSocket has since matured into one of the main technologies powering the modern web. Designed to be event-driven and full-duplex, and optimized for minimum overhead and low latency, WebSockets have become a preferred choice for many organizations and developers seeking to build interactive, realtime digital experiences that provide delightful user experiences.

Here at Ably, we constantly strive to enhance our state-of-the-art product offering and to provide an industry-leading developer experience for our users. As a testament to our ongoing efforts, we’re delighted to announce that Ably has recently won three 2021 DevPortal Awards: The DevPortal Awards aims to: This is the second year running when Ably has taken part in the DevPortal Awards. In 2020, we won two DevPortal Awards.

Ably is a platform for pub/sub messaging. Publishes are done on named channels, and clients subscribed to a given channel have all messages on that channel delivered to them. The Ably pub/sub backend is multi-region: we run the production cluster in 7 AWS regions, and channel pub/sub operates seamlessly between them.

Here at Ably we consider software development to be in our DNA. We write and maintain a lot of code, much of it open-source, with full public visibility, and we host and manage it using the GitHub platform. The code is segmented into numerous discrete repositories, each with a specific scope and purpose. We've been using GitHub heavily since Ably was founded in 2016, so we have plenty of history, and we're committed to the platform.

Great user experience on the web comes from being able to provide users with exactly what they want in the most seamless way possible. Behind the scenes, some user actions may take more time to process than others. For example, showing or hiding an HTML element is a quick operation whereas making an XHR request to get data from an external API is a slower operation. JavaScript provides us with a way to handle them all without giving up that instant delight users naturally expect.

Anyone who's worked in technology has likely hit on the "build vs. buy" question at some point. Should you build your own custom solution to meet the exact requirements of your business? Or does it make more financial sense and save time if you use a third-party vendor? Let's use an example. You are a tech lead at a company that delivers a platform for online learning.

Many technology companies have an ongoing commitment to their customers to guarantee reliability and uptime, with service level agreements that guarantee to resolve or escalate incidents within a particular time frame. Engineering team members rotate shifts so that someone is always on-call to be "paged" (these days, not using an actual pager) if an issue arises. Being on-call means that you typically need to be responsive even outside of your usual office hours.

Livestreams allow an online audience to come together and watch a video broadcast in realtime. Globally, uptake has soared since 2020 as people come together to experience live sports and arts events; and to work, learn and play. The popularity of livestream entertainment is, in part, down to how it includes the audience. Integrated chat and other features allow viewers to interact -- with each other and the host.

Ably was the delegate sponsor at GopherCon UK this year and we had a great time. The conference was held in The Brewery, London. For many of our team members it was the first physical developer event they had been to in almost two years. Whilst I am thrilled to be returning to face-to-face interaction and the depth of conversation they enable, I certainly forgot how early a start physical events are.

Here at Ably, we’ve helped many people to solve some truly interesting, and at times wacky data distribution problems. Be it helping to organise transport for the healthcare sector, or acting as one of the key communication layers on a VR platform; in more and more aspects of our lives, we’re expecting online experiences to happen in realtime. Unsurprisingly though, one key use-case reemerges every time: chat.