Recently, annevk and hixie have changed XHR/WebSocket spec so {XMLHttpRequest,WebSocket}.send() could accept ArrayBufferView instead of ArrayBuffer: http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/xhr/rev/f0c81ac5c134 (XHR spec change) http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/xhr/raw-file/tip/Overview.html#the-send()-method (XHR latest spec) http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7084&to=7085 (WebSocket spec change) http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/#dom-websocket-send (WebSocket latest spec) Related discussion: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012AprJun/0141.html However, this change yields compatibility breakage (i.e. existing code using send(ArrayBuffer) will no longer work), so we might want to discuss how to deal with it before implementing it.
The spec was updated to allow both ArrayBuffer and ArrayBufferView to be sent in WebSocket. The XHR spec has moved to http://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/ but still only has ArrayBufferView.
WebSocket spec: As Hixie said, we added ArrayBufferView but also kept ArrayBuffer basically for compatibility. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=17263 http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/ WebSocket WebCore implementation: It conforms to the latest spec, i.e. both ArrayBuffer and ArrayBufferView https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90877 http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk/Source/WebCore/Modules/websockets/WebSocket.idl?rev=124846 XHR: Seems there's no active discussion after dropping ArrayBuffer and adding ArrayBufferView. As it's a matter of spec discussion, it's ok to close this bug for now, I think. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012AprJun/0214.html Simon's summary of conclusion. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=16732