Indian start-up TringMe launched a demo of a widget that now allows a user the ability to make a VoIP call from Microsoft Silverlight applications. Silverlight doesn’t allow access to a microphone, thus restricting VoIP calls, so TringMe used a backdoor Flash widget to access the microphone.
This could open up the door for Silverlight developers to integrate VoIP in their applications. What’s interesting is the ability to use Silverlight’s competing application, Flash, to get around issues in the Silverlight platform. Basically, a competing platform is being used to strengthen an existing platform.
To try it out, visit this site. I was able to successfully make a call to my U.S. cell phone.
We wrote about TringMe in 2007 when the company launched a flash-based web phone for browsers. TringMe is a VoIP applications service that allows users to embed Flash widgets to make calls from their computers.
Nothing to see here. They are simply using Silverlight’s HTML bridge to make a direct call through JavaScript into their Flash application and pass in the number you entered.
Silverlight can be extended nicely this way, but I wouldn’t say this is noteworthy. There are other examples of Flash/Silverlight integration that are better.
I decrypted their code (I guess those guys don’t know about obfuscation):
private void OnCallHandler(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.phonenumber.get_Text()))
{
MessageBox.Show(“Please enter a phone number”);
}
else
{
this.callbutton.set_Content(“Hangup”);
HtmlPage.get_Window().Invoke(“MakeCall”, new object[] { this.phonenumber.get_Text() });
}
}
private void OnHangupHandler(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
HtmlPage.get_Window().Invoke(“Hangup”, new object[0]);
this.callbutton.set_Content(“Call Now”);
}
You can clearly see its a simple Html invoke with the number as a parameter.
Bart – good decomposition, what are they using Flash for? Can VOIP be accessed directly?
Paul Lopez
If it was so simple, why did not you think about it and published it?
Main point of story is not about technical strength of the solution. It is about making VOIP functionality available in Silverlight apps.
If google had done something like tihs, all you fan boys would be jumping up and down and shout “Brilliant!!” from roof top.
It is simple – It’s just not a clever thing to do. It’s like saying “Hey, I just built a new search engine – it uses Google to perform the searches and then sends the results to my ‘search engine’ before displaying them to you” – why not just use Google in the first place? … or in the instance just use Flash to make the voip call – they’ve already got Flash in the workflow.
A weird solution if you ask me!
Silverlight has better audio and video quality, uses fewer CPU and memory resources, and is easier to code for.
Basically, this hack allows you to get all the benefits of Silverlight while using Flash for the stuff MS hasn’t programmed into Silverlight yet.
I second chris. That exactly what it is.
And leena, we expect much more from you and TC :-).
Not some report on a silly hack.
Have any of you used silverlight? If not, you may not even realize the potential of this (Check my response below).
@chris how do you define clever? Can you show us your better and ‘clever’ solution than what these guys have done?
@dks123 you bring in valid points.
@dks123 ,
These guys have a Flash program that does VOIP and they added a simple call to open up their Flash program with Silverlight. The article makes it sound they integrated Silverlight/Flash together and its “powerful”
Its clear the author doesn’t know how the technology works and as mentioned above…its an article about a hack.
It WAS published before.
http://michaelsync.net/2008/07/25/silverlight-and-flash-interoperability-using-html-bridge-and-externalinterface-api-by-jonas-folles%C3%B8
Good to see that silverlight is coming along. More competition means better dev platforms for all of us.
I don’t get it.
Why not just code it in flash to begin with?
Exactly! I shake my head in amazement! So a bunch of guys used MS Silverlight to cross-talk to a Flash movie via Javascript? Why not just use all Flash to begin with.
MS Silverlight has about as much chance of success as most of MS’s other ventures in to the web space – next to none. Just another example of them playing catch up.
Silverlight has better audio and video quality, uses fewer CPU and memory resources, and is easier to code for. You also get to use C#, J#, Ruby, IronPython, or any other DLR language. Did I mention that the tools for all this are free?
I didn’t know that (use C#, J#, Ruby, IronPython, or any other DLR language).
I still think it kind of a weird thing to do (use Flash to talk to Silverlight to do something Flash could already do).
Agreed. you don’t have to spend $$$ to develop silverlight code. Adobe sucks with their expensive development tools.
Nice hack till MS gives us a way to access microphone from silverlight.
better audio-video in SL? I would disagree. the output, in my experience, has almost always been clunky. I am not sure whether Blend lets a dev to create a single exe package like Flash.
Flash-based apps can still be light and i once disagree about SL being light on resources.
SL maybe getting adopted by a few people but that is not a sign of things to come. SL still needs to mature…and that can happen only when MS dev does something to improve it.
personally, Blend’s UI has to be worst I have ever seen.
TringMe is just trying to make its app saleable by providing it on every platform it can think of. admitted. it’s not that big a deal.
Can you please show me where I can get Visual studio full edition for free so I can develop free Silverlight applications? I think not $400 for FlexBuilder is just as cheap if not cheaper. A poor workman blames expensive tools. Now your app is just useless as SL only have what 5% max market penetration where as if you used just flash you would have covered 98%. If you actualyl want to make an app the people will use forget SL and go Flash/flex.
So, you will write about this non-newsworthy tidbit, but not about sites like myhairylip.com or cheesebreadfactory.com?
What gives!
Looks very promising, i am going to download it right away.
I’m gonna make a VoIP service in JavaScript so! And just call Flash to make the job, and said that i make a ‘JavaScript VoIP service’ .
Useless, and show the superiority of Flash.
You could, except that you would actually be showing that JS is superior to Flash b/c JS can Flash it’s bitch.
nice service till microsoft resolve the silverlight issue
rc
trading tennis blog
These guys have already documented their flash widget code so I am sure they are not into obfuscation but more to prove the point that it can be done from silverlight and they did good job.
It’s not about how they did it but what they did which no one could do it before.
Things looks simpler once accomplished. Nice work tring me.
This has been done before.
http://michaelsync.net/2008/07/25/silverlight-and-flash-interoperability-using-html-bridge-and-externalinterface-api-by-jonas-folles%C3%B8
Wow! Yet another Web based Voip startup. Seems like people just cook up a web app, run asterisk or freeswitch at the backend with a web front and money starts pouring
-S
I agree, I’m confused as to why this is a Flash solution but under the name Silverlight?
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Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
What’s the bruhaha? There’s already a clean, pure Java solution that enables VOIP on any webpage: http://www.c2call.com.
I have used their flash widget and it works very well. Good to see that they are showing interesting ways to access VoIP.
Nice idea to make VoIP accessible from silverlight tringme. Kudos!
@Leena, thanks for the nice coverage.
@dks123, @Jason, @rc, @Sergio, @Elisa, @Sagar Patil, @Anil thanks for your encouraging words.
@Paul Lopez you’ve hit the nail on the head by asking “Can VoIP be accessed directly?” Since one can access microphone in Silverlight as yet, VoIP isn’t directly possible and hence we have shown an alternative.
@Chris @Pat Hawks – The idea here was to show how to use MS Silverlight if you “have to use Silverlight” for VoIP. Flash has been demonstrated by us quite sometime back and this provides an alternative since the Silverlight developers need not know anything about using Flash.
@Scott, TBH, this was done for your customers only :). You provide excellent development tools but without access to mic, the millions of of silverlight developers in the world cannot really do VoIP. We’ve had several developers ask us if we had a Silverlight based VoIP solution. Infact, one of our customers who is doing the entire development in Silverlight had categorically asked if there was anyway he could get a Silverlight widget. Since Silverlight is yet to provide access to microphone, we came up with this trick to employ the Flash workaround. Atleast with this, Silverlight application developers can now do VoIP. More developer and business for you, isn’t it? :)
@Bart, thanks for the decomposition. Although you didn’t have to go that far since all source code available anyways. But I’m glad you’ve shown that the workaround is precisely what is captured in this article
@Michael Bartz, if you do that, just make sure to use TringMe’s Flash solution ;-)
We’ve had Flash based widgets for a long time since we were the first ones to commercially demonstrate Flash-based calling capability in 2007. We’ve provided MobileVoIP solution, Gtalk-based telephony, Flash Telephony and other such solutions and believe that providing alternative “access point” to do VoIP increases its reach and the applications that can use it.
We don’t claim any breakthrough and have clearly stated how this Silverlight based solution uses a workaround which Leena has captured well in this article. Thanks again for all the comments.
freakin’ cool! – @tringme, why even call it a workaround? I hope the bozos at seattle see this.
I like the idea. If it works from silverlight as they say, then I don’t care what goes into making it work. I for one would like to give this a spin
Funny stuff,
Next we will see someone discovers how to make SilverLight play flash video, by embedding a flash player.
download link aint working , get a 404
http://login.tringme.com/tringme.sisx
Im sorry this is totally stupid. Its just flash streaming the audio via RTMP to the server. I could hook js or anything that runs in a browser and can talk to js up to flash and do the same thing. What’s the point. Why not just use flash?
And no its not what google did. Google have added different camera drivers and send the audio / video using their own encoder and protocol to the server. All flash is used for is showing the video in the browser without requiring another plugin. Quite smart.
This is called ‘crafty code’ – brilliant. MS reading this? give us mic please, till then we’ll use tringme
Wht i found more interesting is its PHP implementation for VoIP
http://tinyurl.com/dfb5h7
I see this discussion getting into the religious territory of Flash vs. Silverlight.
Silverlight (SL) is a powerful technology and I believe has a great future. MS generally gets it right when it is going behind an established market (remember Netscape and IE?). The development tools are available for FREE and might I say, really user-friendly and intuitive. Development can be done using any of the supported languages – C#, VB.NET, C++ etc. Even the debugger support is great. Overall, as a developer, I am in awe of the tools available for me. SL is supported on Linux and that makes my reach as global as it gets.
Coming to SL , it packs quite a punch for developing web applications. One can leverage past MS development tools and language experience to develop an app in SL. For e.g. If I have WPF based apps, moving them to SL is quick and easy. So, as a company, if I am used to MS tools for development, I can’t go wrong with SL. The quality of UI that SL supports is on par with what Flash can do or even better. Now comparing this to Flash development – I need to buy expensive development platform from Adobe, get myself trained in Flash which isn’t the same as programming in say C++ or so, learn AS and the whole timeline thing etc. With all that said, just because MS doesn’t provide access to mic, should we not be able to create applications that can interact with voice? Given that even in SL3, mic support isn’t yet proposed, are we just to wait ? MS, are you listening?
The way I look at it, tringme has opened doors not only to make SL apps interact using voice but also for Redmond to take notice of the absence of mic support. I wouldn’t be surprised if this little hack forces MS to bring in mic support sooner than what they have planned – maybe even in SL3 for all you know.
Also, I can develop the app today using this hack and once MS supports mic in SL, I can transition over to a widget that is fully SL based. Atleast, I can get going today without having to wait for MS to support it right-away.
Although I agree that this might be a weird hack, its well thought off. However strange it may be, I wouldn’t mind using it to start with. The impact of this hack is probably far larger than what is apparently visible.
Stephen, sounds like you’re a MSFT product fan, but your claims about Flash are unsubstantiated.
The right solution here would likely be to use the free and open source Flex SDK, which comes with a free set of command line tools, a free version for students, and very reasonable pricing for the Flex Builder product.
I also don’t understand your comments about Silverlight being supported on Linux.
What is your motivation for being so positive on Silverlight?
Dave Story
Developer Tools
Adobe Systems
Odd, Dave you imply that Stephen is a MSFT fan and probably just biased but aren’t you just as biased when it comes to Adobe products since they sign your checks? Take a peek outside the Adobe walled garden you’re in and honestly access if your competitors are creating better development tools than you…in this case they are.
Now that we’ve torn the code apart sufficiently, does anyone happen to know the level of digital security of this method is? I’d like to know myself.
http://www.justaskgemalto.com
@Apul Nahata
I think it’s a great solution for the no mic support in Silverlight, I guess what’s a little concerning is it’s leaving people with the assumption that it’s 100% Silverlight… which judging by the comments above has backfired a little.
That being said, as a member of the Silverlight Team we hear you loud and clear on the mic support.
Stay tuned… :)
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Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
@Scott Barnes Thanks. We are glad this has been heard and we hope mic support will soon be available in Silverlight.
I am still wondering about the 100% Silverlight assumption being made since Techcrunch in their article & we on our demo page had clearly mentioned about the workaround using Flash. In fact, Leena’s mention about this solution using a competing platform ensured that floor was nicely laid without any hidden details.
In general, I think folks who are comfortable with this solution will go ahead use it. Once Silverlight has the mic support, we will be able to provide a 100% silverlight solution.
Thanks again everyone for your comments,
Apul Nahata
Hi Scott,
Any news about the enabling of webcam support? For local sub we created a webcamgame, where you get points if you mimic the exact movements of the dancer on the website.
site is included.
There is no question the idea of making a phone call out of a Silverlight application is extremely interesting and presents a very important piece of thought leadership in the RIA space. However this is not the first time this was done at all.
This same approach was used by Cynergy nearly a year ago when they won the National Microsoft Phizzpop Challenge. You can see their live phone call to Senator Obama’s office at SXSW a year ago here
http://www.truveo.com/PhizzPop-Cynergy-presents-Ben/id/288230381149978300
Cynergy then demonstrated the same approach, again calling Senator Obama’s office live from the UXWeek conference over the summer.
http://vimeo.com/2833183
The general approach was blogged by Skype as well
http://share.skype.com/sites/us/2008/09/ben_franklin_namesake_goes_phi.html
In the name of fairness, openness and honesty it is worth adjusting the claims that this is the first time ever this has been accomplished, and to give reference and claims to those who have laid the foundation for this kind of thought leadership.
Dave Wolf
Vice President
Cynergy