Success! Thanks for your time Paul and Marc,
webURL: location.protocol +"domain/site/"
was the key. I had tried this previously, however in my case because of the structure of this site I needed to use location.protocol + "domain/subdomain/sites/site" which I didn't think about till this discussion.
Just for information sake, the html page is needed because we are using this in an IOS web app and the sharepoint .aspx pages do not play as nicely there. Great to have the new JSON functions for this particular use Marc - thanks a lot.