Straight to the point... Bad news first... webRemote development is halted. Done. No more.
As I started to look at cross-browser compatibility, I decided it would be too much of a headache to maintain. When I dug into it even more, + couple weeks of thinking... I've pretty much done everything wrong in "modern" terms of javascript and browsers... What I wrote would have been awesome five years ago, but not today.
The good news is... I've learned so much on the journey, I *may* be crazy enough to start it all again with a kick ass architecture, html5, native cross browser support, better design tools and overall a better approach. The only downside, and it might not even be a downside, is folks will need to create html5 remotes separately from HB and the HB theme designer.
The grand plan, which may never see the light of day...
Every device in HB will have a HTML5 widget. There are plenty of html design tools out there that allow you to use your own widgets. The widget will be derived from a javascript framework such as jquery or dojo or ???. The widgets will also be required to work with other components of the selected framework. This will enable all sorts of goodies on the selected framework such as websockets, subscribe/publish changes, push technology, cross platform, + + +. On the server side, the current webserver plugin would be extended to support websockets, push, subscriptions, etc.
This approach will work well with all stock devices, but may be challenging on non-stock, script and null devices. Each non-standard device will requires it's own widget to be written. There is probably a generic widget that could be written for some cases where you need to give it more info about the devices/properties/values to make it work.
What this would like in HB? Fire up your favourite html5 editor, specify new project, add in the base framework library, drag & drop the light widget onto the page, specify the device... And you're done. Very much like how it is done today with the theme editor, but it would be a completely separate html5 editor. Most decent html5 editors allow you to manage themes, so you could change the look and feel.
It's just an idea, a framework, a starting point. In *theory* it would be a lot less work than what I was attempting before. We'll see if and when it turn out in practice.
As for the current webRemote... I will support it "as is" to anyone using it today. As for the webserver plugin, I will support that as well since it provides some nifty JSON functionality if anyone is using it.
Apologies to all those that were expecting something more.
Tim