communication tools

[Hynek Hanke]

Hello all,

I can easily see why a developer might prefer IRC over
an embedded web application as the quickest way to solve
his problem of talking to another developer. However,
let me explain other considerations as well.

The reason why we have started to develop a new
free software communication tool was that we needed
to enable people who visit our websites to easily communicate
with others. That was first a requirement in the Digital Language
School project for the blind and visually impaired.

Easy means not having to install any external tool,
set up channel names etc., just follow a link on the
website which will take them to the chatroom.

While there are numerous proprietary solutions available
for embedded web communication tools, we didn't found
any which would be Free Software and at the same time
well accessible for the visually handicaped or easily adaptable
to become accessible.

The new website is going to contain both the development
and user section. As we said before, the user section will
offer user-oriented information on Free Accessibility. Something,
which is now severely missing.  For the user section, it is
of course much better if visitors are able to directly enter
communication with other users by clicking a simple link,
as opposed to be asked to install and learn some special
application (such as an IRC client).

We decided for Flash and Red5 for technical reasons, but
are looking for HTML5 when it is ready. The only other
possibility now seemed to be Java. The Flash component
exports a JavaScript API and can be controlled by
ordinary HTML buttons on the webpage, thus making
it accessible even on platforms where Flash itself is not.

So this is the bigger picture and since users are,
at the end of the day, whom we do our work for,
it would greatly help us to use our products ourselves
to make sure they are nice and comfortable for them.

Of course I'm not imposing this solution, just explaining
why there is value in it and why we would welcome
cooperation of anyone who is interested.

Best regards,
Hynek Hanke