Whether you are interested in building your own branded instant messenger client or you're just looking to create a presence for your brand and users, building a desktop instant messenger is the cornerstone to establishing your brand as a household name. Many of us use instant messenger (IM) applications and GUI-based messaging clients constantly, and have come to rely on them as a daily form of communication. Popular IM clients include those available from AOL, MSN, Adium, Meebo, and Yahoo!—to name just a few.

This article describes how you can take advantage of the interoperability of Adobe Flash with a .NET back end using WebORB .NET (C#).

I've included sample files with working examples of the following concepts:

• Using Adobe Flash Media Server for delivery of audio and video
• Data messaging with WebORB .NET 3.3 version with MSMQ

Use the files available in the downloadable sample to follow along with this article and as the basis for building your own projects. The sample project described here can be extended on most popular back ends (see the following note about Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES for more details).

Requirements

To follow along with this article, you'll need the following software and files:

Flash Media Server 2

• Try
• Buy

Flex Builder 3 beta 3

• Download

Adobe AIR beta 3

• Download

WebORB for .NET version 3.3 or later

• Learn more

Sample files:

• open_messenger_code.zip (ZIP, 1.9 MB)

Prerequisite knowledge

General experience building applications with Adobe Flex or Adobe AIR is suggested. It is also recommended that you have some knowledge of development techniques using .NET and an understanding of how Flash Media Server works.

A note about Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES

Because WebORB uses almost identical syntax for their subscribers and producers, it would be fairly straightforward to port this solution over to an Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES solution. The Java-based LiveCycle Data Services ES solution allows Flex clients to easily connect to Java EE-based servers and can manipulate data in a variety of ways. LiveCycle is growing to include the widest range of services possible with minimal complexity. The service registry makes it easy for developers to find the services already in existence.

Since the release of Flex Builder 2 update, the LiveCycle solution has incorporated Flex Data Services (FDS) to become what is now LiveCycle Data Services ES. LiveCycle still provides out-of-the box solutions for monitoring and high performance (over AMF and RTMP) remote procedure calls (RPC) using NetStream or RemoteObject calls once attributed to FDS.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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