XMPP in the browser
XMPP is a very mature and robust communication technology. But unfortunately, it hasn't seen broad adoption in the web community. It's quite possible to use XMPP directly in the browser and we've done so extensively. We've built chat dashboard systems and a live mapped asset tracking system for RECON Dynamics, both using XMPP.
Web developers often shy away from XMPP because frankly, dealing with large amounts of raw incoming XML in the browser is a pain. However, our team is working to make XMPP friendly for web developers. One example is a library called Stanza.io that provides a simple JavaScript API that connects directly to an XMPP server over a WebSocket.
This can be used for lots of interesting things, for example federated WebRTC calls over XMPP.
Thinking about building something great with XMPP? Let us know how we can help or read about how we work.