LiveCycle Collaboration Service adding some interesting new features.

Original post on blogs.adobe.com

The focus for our August TSUNAMI release has been all about responding to our top (at least 1 and 2) feature requests. So, what’s in the box? (Sign up or log in to the Collaboration Service Developer Portal to download the SDK and get to work!)

1. SCREEN SHARING. Available now. Just as you have components for publishing and subscribing to audio and web cameras, there’s a simple set of new components : ScreenSharePublisher and ScreenShareSubscriber.

We’re exposing the add-in technology used for ConnectNow to allow screen capture – when invoked within the Flash Player, the ScreenSharePublisher pops up an (almost) invisible add-in, which it controls. The publisher (in the regular Player) has a full set of APIs for controlling the add-in, and the experience it quite good. We’re still working on getting the right branding in place for the add-in, and we’re looking at remote-control for a future release, but the standard screensharing features are all there for you to develop with. Viewing a shared screen is a matter of using a ScreenShareSubscriber within the regular Flash Player. As always, we’re releasing early and often, so there’s lots of time to make improvements – if you spot bugs or things you don’t like (or just want to praise us, that’s cool too), the forums are staffed with our fanatical dev team.

2. RECORDING AND PLAYBACK. Just like it says – record and download, then playback everything that happened in your collaborative session, whether audio, video, or data. We’re playing this one a little closer to the vest, and releasing it as a private beta – we still need to work on stress-testing the service at high loads, so we want to let developers in a little more gradually to help out. If you’d like to join the recording beta – send us a mail with “Recording Beta” in the subject, to LCCS@<the company offering Adobe LCCS>.com.

3. LCCS JAVASCRIPT SDK. We’ve heard a lot of folks tell us that they’d like to add real-time audio / video to their HTML forms, as well as make the forms collaborative. Our standard question was “so, are you willing to replace all your existing HTML UI with Flash?”, the answer to which was often the sound of crickets chirping sadly in the distance. The JS APIs are nice in that if you need audio/video, put a SWF next to your HTML content, and code the collaborative form by adding simple JS code to your existing HTML. No more rip-and-replace of work you’ve already done!

4. NEW DOMAIN! Yes, our old domain was confusing. Our new one is just common sense. The developer portal? http://collaboration.adobelivecycle.com. Room URLs? http://collaboration.adobelivecycle.com/<accountName>/<roomName>. No need to worry, all your old domains and URLs will continue working as they always have.

If you are attending FITC in San Francisco, be sure to check out our session to learn more about these new features, Wednesday, 2:30pm. We’re also thinking of hosting a webinar to demo some of the new goodies – reply in the comments if you’d be interested, so we can see if it’s worth scheduling. Read more at blogs.adobe.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a9da