add free online web chat to your asp.net site

i've spoken a few times about axosoft.  they are a local ISV that does some great work.  their ceo, hamid, does a great thing every year for his employees (maybe more often) in encouraging and icubating new projects.  they have a core product, but also have incubated some great ideas.  some haven't lasted, but some live strong!  either way it is great to see what kind of ideas their group comes up with.

PureChat is one of those new ideas.  this is an idea that was just released.  it is for asp.net sites and is built using c# and asp.net ajax as well as the ajaxcontroltoolkit.  one of the developers, jonas, writes:

PureChat is written entirely with C# and javascript, against the 2.0 .NET framework. It uses Microsoft's ASP.Net AJAX, as well as selected controls from the AJAX Control Toolkit. Before I go any further, I just want to say that the Atlas (I think I'll always call it Atlas, it's shorter and sounds better) javascript framework really adds a lot of value and productivity for doing any sort of extensive work in javascript. Major kudos go out to that team at Microsoft. (emphasis mine)

very cool.  i just downloaded the free single operator key (this means operator, not incoming chatters) and installed onto my site in < 10 minutes.  i can't get it to play nice with subtext right now, but i'm going to see if the subtext list can help me out (httphandler collision and all).  as an operator i get a complete operator panel that gives me:

• view of all chats
• access to transcripts of chats
• abandoned chats
• multiple chats

it looks like this:

the end user gets a chat window they communicate with which looks like...well, a chat window.  what's cool is there is nothing for the user to install, and this runs in the browser using asp.net ajax technology.  i was really glad to see jonas' comment about how that framework enabled a lot of things a lot easier for him...that is good to hear.

so if you want to enable web-based chat on your site, you can get a free single operator license or right now they are doing a promotion for $5 for a 5-operator license.  this would be great if you need to provide online customer service in your site/application.  i don't think the intent is to put it on a blog (personal) or anything...at least i don't think that would be a good scenario for me i should say.  the operator has to be logged in.  but for scenarios where you have a product and customers, it would be a good thing to quickly add to your site (or product) and be able to directly communicate with your users.

good work axosoft...i can't wait to hear some behind-the-scenes stories on how it was to leverage the ajax framework for asp.net!  maybe they can add a silverlight UI at some point :-)