ASP.NET Web Application Instant Messanging Options

Question

I'm looking into building an IM feature into our internal website (so this is not going to be a commercial application) and I was hoping I could get some ideas regarding already available sort of off-the-self solutions I could use.

I found the Google Jabber.NET code that I could leverage if I put an AJAX wrapper around it but I haven't downloaded the code yet to see how feasible it would be. Beyond this and the obvious Google searches I haven't done anything yet.

So, have you ever had to develop a web-based IM client into an ASP.NET web application? And if so - what did you use.. I'm only interested in off-the-self solutions since I'm already aware of the alternative of rolling my own which is what I will do if there isn't anything available that I could use. The idea is that since this an internal tool we'd like to spend as little time on it because nobody is paying for the development :p

Many thanks!

P.S. Something like the Ajax IM Framework Project is what I'm looking for, but for .NET

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 18:21

1

From Windows Live: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/gg252699

answered Jan 28 '11 at 18:21

Robert Levy

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thanks @Robert. looks interesting/promising. have you ever used this yourself? – Mike Dinescu Jan 30 '11 at 18:53
@Miky - Yup, full disclosure: I used to work on the Windows Live team that created this – Robert Levy Jan 30 '11 at 18:59

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '11 at 18:01

You can use Java Applets. They are often rich on features.

A list of alternatives can be found at: http://www.hotscripts.com/category/java/applets/chat-systems/

Some of those Java Applets are based on IRC. You can run your own IRC server or use a public server. Either way you just redirect the users to a specific channel.

Advantages: Works well, lots of clients for all platforms so people can use for instance http://www.mirc.com/, easy to integrate with and create bots for.

Disadvantage: Uses TCP port 6667 which may be blocked by some corporate firewalls. Even if use port 80 it may still be blocked as corporate caching servers would expect HTTP to be transmitted on that port.

ASP.NET Web Application Instant Messanging Options

2 Answers2