When SparkWeb became open-source, I took a look at the source code and found it had more features than the Flex-based XMPP client I was co-developing for the Red5 Plugin. It therefore made sense to migrate the Flash audio and video features we had developed for our client to SparkWeb and make it compatible with the Spark and Openfire Red5 Plugins and package it as part of the Red5 plugin. The downside to this that the modifications to the Red5 version of SparkWeb makes it out of sync with the official SVN and it could possibly become a fork requiring a name change later on.

So what does the Red5 SparkWeb offer?

1. A plugin container for SparkWeb. I noticed that quite a number of users are asking for a plugin to deploy SparkWeb. My advice would be to try the Red5 Plugin.
   
   Configure Index.html and point your users at
   
   http://your_server:nnnn/red5_webapp_name/sparkweb
   
   Where nnnn is your HTTP-BIND port number (default 7070) and red5_webapp_name is your default red5 web application name (default red5)
   
   
2. Enables use of the Red5 plugin audio and video features with both Spark and SparkWeb. You can't do video messaging and the video roster is replaced with visual presence (see below). You can make audio/video calls and share your desktop with your contacts. Each call record is logged in openfire and can be queried by the administrator with the Openfire SIP plugin.
   
   
3. Makes SIP phone calls between Spark and SparkWeb users. All SparkWeb SIP calls are logged with the Openfire SIP plugin as well.
   
   
4. Provides webcam support. If you have a webcam installed on your PC, it will be automatically detected and will be used instead of your vcard photo. You can disable this in index.html. You can add or replace your vcard photo with a snapshot of your webcam when you edit your profile. You can also publish snapshots from your webcam as visual presence to all your contacts. What this means is that all your contacts will have a snapshot of your webcam in their rosters. The interval between snapshots is 60 secs by default and can be modified in index.html. See a draft copy of my proposal to extend XMPP with visual presence. Please feel free to post comments at the bottom of the document.
   
   

I also made a few cosmetic changes to my taste and added sound effects for incoming calls and instant messaging. I added some code to improve the loss of focus detection by tracking Flash application activation/deactivation messages and mouse movement. If you use Internet explorer and enable pop-ups, you will get a pop-up in the bottom right corner of the screen with a photo, name and first line of the incoming messaging if you are outside of SparkWeb when a new message arrives.

I am hoping to add fastpath support and a calendar to SparkWeb next.

You may or may not already be aware that I have been a full time member of the Jive family for a couple of weeks now! It's been quite interesting to see how different it is from my previous job in a university setting. It's been a lot of fun already and it's really exciting to have turned my favorite hobby into a career. =) My coworkers are great and I almost find myself wondering why I didn't do this earlier.

So what am I going to be doing? Well, the development of the IM Gateway plugin is part of my job now. We'll be setting solid goals and release dates instead of it being dependent entirely on my free time. That and Openfire are my main focuses. I'm really excited about playing a more direct role in Openfire development! One of my first tasks will be to improve the unix installers for Openfire. They have been lacking love for a while now and I have a strong unix background to bring to the table. In one of the next releases of Openfire we'll have improved packages, unix scripts, and better support for more operating system distributions. Overall, good things to come! =)

You may have heard that I have taken over as lead developer of Spark. It's been a long time since I have been involved in client development and I actually miss it. My very first XMPP related project was a client. Now, as you've heard from the Ignite Realtime post preceding this one, Spark is a low priority. My focus with it in terms of work with Jive is bug fixes, maintenance, and paying customer requirements. Beyond that, I'll likely be working on it on my own time when I need a change of pace. I am a Mac user primarily, so you may see more Mac focused fixes at first. If nothing else I'm going to make sure Spark is something I enjoy using, which coincides to a lot of things that the community has reported/requested anyway. I highly encourage folk who are interested to submit patches! The only caveat is that for patches of any size, I'll need you to sign contributor agreements, if you haven't already.

Now, since I'm involved in more than just the IM Gateway plugin now, I can't keep up with the forums as much as I did before. I try to spend some time each day looking over the forums, but with more than just the single forum, it's too much to keep up with entirely. Dawn is working hard on coming up with good ways to involve the community more and try to make sure things don't get missed! She has been speaking on this in the Jive Lounge, so please visit the lounge and contribute if you have some thoughts!

Anyway, I wanted to make sure folk understood that my role has changed and wave hi from within Jive! =) Any questions?

In this video, Jive Software's David Smith talks about Actionscript, Javascript, and the future of webapps as they relate to his work on Spark.

Or download the Quicktime version (caution: 69MB file)