A Model For IM and Media Driven Communication Services

Constructing graphical client applications for the Instant Messaging (IM) domain can be complex and error prone. As well as coping with the details of a specific IM protocol, the developer must also master specific user interface toolkits, deal with media streaming protocols and codecs, handle capability negotiation and deploy a robust event handling strategy for this highly asynchronous application style. These often competing concerns must be encapsulated in a clean design that can be evolved to cater for an ever expanding set of capabilities now viable for IM client applications. This paper proposes an architecture, component set and pattern based framework to encapsulate this domain, which facilitates the rapid construction of rich media client IM applications. These may be conventional or specialised IM clients or add-on components for existing applications.