..I try to get a simple python client running for days now. When I finally managed to connect via websockets, the first thing I read was "deprecated, use socket.io instead".
Even though it's "deprecated" it's still much more reliable than the socket.io interface.So please don't turn it off!
The only problem is that it doesn't work with the latest Chrome and other late WebSocket libs... and nobody wants to fix it.
That's probably why they labeled it "deprecated".
"direct connection" to old websocket url is deprecated. you should now use socket.io to get an ID which will be part of a websocket url you can use.
check out sample implementation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5855.msg629600#msg629600