Pidgin Query

[Stephen Eilert]

On 7/31/07, Jeff Sadowski <jeff.sadowski at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would think you would need to use something more along the lines of java.
> Personally I don't like java but it sounds like you want objects on a web page
> that talk with the server on the other end or talk directly to chat servers.

You mean a Java applet then. However, that's not very different from a
desktop application. Heck, you could even use Java Web Start and start
the application by clicking a link.

> PHP from what I understand you have to submit each time to the server
> to do communications. I'm pretty sure gmail uses something with
> javascript to refresh your mail every so often and has a scripting
> language like php to update your page. Its not instant.

GMail does that with Javascript, more precisely with what is now
called "AJAX", or rather, XMLHttpRequest. The choice of server
language is quite irrelevant.

You would have to keep updating with the applet too, unless you are
keeping a connection open with your own protocol. By that point, it is
not a web application anymore.

> Javascript
> itself might be another possibility but it would require a lot of code
> to be downloaded each time. Even with a complete java client you would
> be downloading the full app each time. To have something slimmer to
> download from the page you could have a java servlet (which could use
> libpurple) running on the server and a java applet that talks to the
> java servlet.

There's also Flash. The download might be shorter, but the Java VM is
pretty heavy in terms of memory consumption, so it doesn't buy you
much.

As far as I know, Meebo is all javascript in the client and works fine.


Stephen