I have been selected as the new project lead for both the SparkWeb and XIFF projects here at the Ignite Realtime community. For about half a year @David and I were the only developers contributing code to those projects on a full-time basis – before SparkWeb’s source was even opened up. I added initial support for shared groups, group chat invitations, kick/ban/nick-change announcements in group chat, various bug fixes, and a bunch of other little features here and there. With my previous work on SparkWeb I have seen first hand how its code has matured over the year. I think it is in a ‘good’ state right now, but clearly there is always room for improvements.
David has made a lot of necessary refactorings in the past that have improved its performance and Safa is currently ensuring SparkWeb is fully compatable with BOSH 1.6. Also, we have various other patches containing excellent improvements from other people in the community that will be included in an upcoming release. These two projects now have a decent amount of activity from outside of Jive, which is great.
From some recent conversations in the weekly chats it is clear to us that people feel comfortable with Openfire, the server – and that what they are expecting to see is a client evolve to the same degree. I would like to hear more about this perspective so I can focus to make it happen in SparkWeb’s use-case.
Interested in getting involved yourself? Well, what are you waiting for? This is an open source community after all… grab the source and join the fun. Send any of your code contributions, ideas, or feedback to me and let’s make the most excellent XMPP web app/lib out there!
Do you have a short term roadmap? I think many of us would like to know what plans you have for the next release. One think I am looking for is a plugin version of sparkweb.
I will have a short term roadmap up as soon as possible. This weekend I am going to use my free time to reacquaint myself with the list of issues/bugs and which XEPs are partially implemented or out of date. With that done I should have a good idea about what needs to be worked on for the next release.
Made note of the plugin framework request, though I do not expect that to be done in an immediate release. Unless someone surprises me with an epic patch.
He’s no longer working for Jive but he is certainly around here in this community. Saw him in a weekly chat after his departure and also talked to him not too long ago over Jabber about his ongoing adventures with Adium development.
We will be using SparkWeb and Fastpath in a call center. A browser sidebar has been developed that will contain a chat button. The Agents can chat with their supervisor or with tier two Agents if they need assistance… Quality assurance monitors can also chat with an Agent. The great thing about the chat capability is that it provides a means of communicating without interrupting the call. SparkWeb works great in that we do not have to install software on each PC. This is especially important for Agents working from home.
Best wishes in your new assignment. I am looking forward to you making SparkWeb a very sucessful product. A roadmap and a plugin framework asap will enable all of us to contribute to your success.
Good luck for your new assignment… I am also waiting for plugin for SparkWeb. I am not being able to use the current version of SparkWeb on Windows platform.