XMPP for real time flash communication

Why is xmpp or jabber not that spread into the flash community? Why we don’t see jabber as an option for real time collaboration apps together with flash? Here are my thoughts on the subject.

XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) or Jabber as i preffer to call it is an open source format for real time collaboration.

Chat networks as gTalk, iChat and, since not so long ago, aim (aol’s instant messaging) uses xmpp as their real time protocol, possibly under their own server implementations.

There are lots of open source’d servers which implement this protocol and some of them support plugins.

What are jabber plugins, you may ask…

With plugins you can integrate your own internal chat network with other networks such as gtalk, yahoo, messenger, aim, etc. or even include a layer of voip. VERY COOL! but…

Why should we, flash developers, care about this?

If you didn’t know, there is a server called openfire from jivesoftware (Yes! the same ppl under other collaborative type of tools) that has an ActionScript2 and ActionScript3 (beta) libraries to interact with the server. This can let us work with it to create multiuser applications that can interact with other chat networks or even voip.

Wait, voip in flash? how is that possible if jabber is a text exchange protocol. Red5 to the rescue!

With the red5 plugin you can extend jabber’s functionality with AMF and support video and audio.

The great thing about jabber is that it is being used by a lot of communities around the world and has proved to be very capable of handling a big amount of concurrent users (it can be clustered very easy with openfire’s gui).

The best of all things (don’t go crazy yet) is that it is free :)

—fernando

P.D: i’m loving this site iilwy which btw uses jabber as their communication layer