Web chat
Encyclopedia
A web chat is a system that allows users to communicate in real time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of internet online chat
Online chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...

 distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to install and learn to use specialized chat software. This trait allows users instantaneous access and only a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

 is required to chat. Users will always get the latest version of a chat service because no software installation or updates are required.

History and technology

The history of web chatting is characterized by trends in underlying web technologies. The first chat sites featured simple interfaces made from dynamically generated HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 pages. The use of HTML allowed sites to incorporate fonts, colors, links, and images into their interfaces, giving them a more modern hypermedia
Hypermedia
Hypermedia is a computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.Hypermedia is a term created by Ted Nelson....

 feel, which was an advantage over older, but more established text-based chat services like IRC. The biggest downside to HTML chat was in its interactivity. Every message sent to an HTML chat required a form submission and subsequent page load, which meant that there was a waiting period between the time a user could send one message and the time they could begin to type the next one. Receiving messages also required frequent page reloads, and could lead to delays, page flicker and distracting browser activity. For these reasons HTML chats have largely fallen out of use today, although some of the older HTML chat sites still remain active.

In 1995, Java applet
Java applet
A Java applet is an applet delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets...

 technology was introduced into web browsers. Java's well developed network and graphical capabilities made it an ideal platform for creating chat interfaces, some of which are in use on the most popular web chat sites today. While there are some drawbacks associated with Java chats such as long initial page loading times, the technology has worked well and scaled well.

Since 2005, newer web technologies such as Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

 and Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

 have been used as the basis for some new chat systems. There are some disadvantages such as incomplete support for networking in the underlying Javascript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 and Actionscript
ActionScript
ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. . It is a dialect of ECMAScript , and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of...

 programming languages. However, the trendiness of these technologies, as well as their strong support for graphical and usability features mean it is likely that these types of chats will become more widespread.

Comparison with other chat services

Web chatting is only a small part of the world of online chat. Web chats do not have the same network effect
Network effect
In economics and business, a network effect is the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. When network effect is present, the value of a product or service is dependent on the number of others using it.The classic example is the telephone...

s as chat services like instant messengers, which become more useful as they become more popular. Smaller, less busy chats can actually have more appeal to users than crowded, popular ones. Really, the only unique feature web chat sites offer is instant accessibility. And in an internet where there are so many other choices for real-time social interaction: Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...

 networks, instant messenger services, online game
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...

s, and virtual world
Virtual world
A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...

s. Web sites devoted to simple text-based chat remain a small, but singular phenomenon.

There are hundreds of web chat sites, which actively compete with each other to the point where some of the more popular ones actually censor the names of other chat sites, preventing users from referring each other to competing chats. The simple accessibility generates an extremely high level of competition between chat sites, as it allows users to switch between them with ease.

Server software

The following are standalone chat servers:
  • Chatspace (Java)
  • Conference Room (Flash, Java)
  • ParaChat (Java, HTML & iPhone App)
  • Pichat (C++, Ajax)
  • Psyced (LPC, Ajax)


The following are web front ends (requires e.g. IRC chat server):
  • CGI:IRC
    CGI:IRC
    CGI:IRC is a CGI program written in Perl that allows access to IRC via a web browser. It is designed to be flexible and has many uses such as an IRC gateway for an IRC network, a chat-room for a website or to access IRC when stuck behind a restrictive firewall....

     (Perl, Ajax)
  • Mibbit
    Mibbit
    Mibbit is a web-based client for modern web browsers that supports Internet Relay Chat , Yahoo Messenger, and Twitter. It is developed by Jimmy Moore and is designed around the Ajax model with a user interface written in JavaScript.- Design :...

     (Java, Ajax)
  • PJIRC
    PJIRC
    Plouf's Java IRC is a web-based open source IRC client that is written in Java. Any web browser that supports the Java Runtime Environment, or an alternative Java interpreter, can use the applet. Many IRC networks have a public installation of the applet for their network.Philippe Detournay, the...

     (Java)
  • qwebirc (Python, Ajax)

See also

  • Chat room
    Chat room
    The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...

  • Live support software
    Live support software
    Live support software is a popular term for online chat applications designed specifically to provide online assistance to users of a website.-Technology:...

  • List of online chat software
  • List of collaborative software
  • Shoutbox
    Shoutbox
    A shoutbox, saybox, tagboard, or chatterbox is a chat-like feature of some websites that allows people to quickly leave messages on the website, generally without any form of user registration....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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