This blog will focus on collaboration software. Technologies and platforms that enable collaborative design and development. Web based whiteboards look like the mechanism or vehicle for realizing this next step for the internet. My experimental research at http://www.colabry.com will be showcased here (hopefully embedded).
Currently on http://www.colabry.com I’ve got two active demonstrations.
First is a Cocomo/AFCS/ LCCS (Adobe) based whiteboard. Its most notable feature is UIComponents on the whiteboard. Unlike most whiteboards this one has images and video as well as Panels, Canvases, TabNavigators, Sliders, Buttons, DataGrids. These elements can be dragged and dropped from the workspace. The real power of the UIComponents is to enable a virtual space that is orders of magnitude bigger than the original real estate. This space can also be orderly and organized; unlike most whiteboards which become very crowded quickly with scribbles/doodles and 0ther attempts at annotation. This version could be extended to include webcam & audio, and/or an AIR version.
The Cocomo version extends the Adobe LCCS API (most of the work extends the Whiteboard class). Until my code is refactored, perhaps it’s better to describe the code as mangeling the Adobe API rather than extending it.
The second whiteboard on http://www.colabry.com is based on Adobe Stratus. It shares the fundamental innovation of UIComponents on the whiteboard; with very different infrastructure. Stratus connects Flash 10 clients directly peer to peer. There is no API so all the whiteboard code is custom from scratch. Webcams and audio as well as file transfers are supported.
There is an AIR version of the Stratus based whiteboard concurrently being developed which has extended features. The AIR version supports drag and drop from the desktop to the whiteboard (which indirectly benefits the web version) . This is quite important to delivering a practical collaboration vehicle. Also unique to the AIR version is use the HTML Class which enables whiteboard co-browsing.
Beyond Adobe, I’m looking at Google Wave. Right now there’s way too much buzz and little real collaboration. Oh, and there is the pesky “R” in RIA – something that GWT can’t do well even with a Canvas. Perhaps using the Google infrastructure and transport mechanisms would make sense.
April 2, 2008 at 2:08 pm |
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