Chat

Java Chat is a process that permits users to communicate in real-time using easily available web interfaces. It is a type of web online chat distinguished by its simplicity & accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to install & learn to use specialised chat program. This trait allows users instantaneous access & only a web browser is necessary to chat. Users will always get the latest version of a chat service because no program installation or updates are necessary.

History and technology

The history of web chatting is characterised by trends in underlying web technologies. The first chat sites featured simple interfaces made from dynamically generated HTML pages. The use of HTML allowed sites to incorporate fonts, colors, links, & images in to their interfaces, giving them a more modern hypermedia 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 necessary a form submission & later page load, which meant that there was a waiting period between the time a user could send two message & the time they could start to type the next two. Receiving messages also necessary frequent page reloads, & could lead to delays, page flicker & distracting browser activity. For these reasons HTML chats have largely fallen out of use today, although a quantity of the older HTML chat sites still remain active.

In 1995, Java applet (Java Chat Software) technology was introduced in to web browsers. Java’s well developed network & graphical capabilities made it an ideal platform for generating chat interfaces, a quantity of which are in use on the most popular web chat sites today. While there’s some drawbacks associated with Java chat such as long initial page loading times, the technology has worked well & scaled well.

Since 2005, newer web technologies such as Ajax & Flash have been used as the basis for some new chat systems. There’s some disadvantages such as incomplete support for networking in the underlying Javascript & Actionscript programming languages. However, the trendiness of these technologies, as well as their strong support for graphical & 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 effects 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. The only matchless feature web chat sites offer is instant accessibility and in a web where there’s so plenty of other choices for real-time social interaction: Web Relay Chat networks, instant messenger services, online games, & virtual worlds. Websites devoted to simple text-based chat remain a small, but singular phenonemon.

There’s hundreds of web chat sites, which actively compete with each other to the point where a quantity 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 very high level of competition between chat sites, as it allows users to switch between them with ease.