A web chat is a system that allow users to communicate in real time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of internet online chat Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct one-on-one chat or text-based group chat , using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs. The expression online chat comes from the word chat which means "informal conversation" 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 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. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to is required to chat. Users will always get the latest version of a chat service because no software installation or updates are required.

Contents

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, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of "tags" surrounded by angle brackets within the web page content pages. The use of HTML allowed sites to incorporate fonts, colors, links, and images into their interfaces, giving them a more modern hypermedia Hypermedia is used as a logical extension of the term hypertext in which graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks intertwine to create a generally non-linear medium of information. This contrasts with the broader term multimedia, which may be used to describe non-interactive linear presentations as well as hypermedia. It is also related feel, which was an advantage over older, but more established text-based chat services like IRC Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) 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 transfers via Direct Client-to-Client. 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.[1]

In 1995, Java applet A Java applet is an applet delivered to the 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. Java applets were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995. Java applets are usually written in the Java 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 is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax techniques has led to an increase in and Flash Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to Web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements and games. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs") 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 is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is typically used to enable programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment. It can be characterized as a prototype-based object-oriented scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is also considered a functional and Actionscript ActionScript is a scripting language developed by Adobe. 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 embedded SWF files. Originally developed by Macromedia, the trademark in the language is now owned by Adobe (which 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 effects 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 increases as more people use it as chat services like instant messengers The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of instant messaging clients. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. External links lead to extensions that add a feature to a client, 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 is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) 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 transfers via Direct Client-to-Client networks, instant messenger The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of instant messaging clients. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. External links lead to extensions that add a feature to a client services, online games 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. The expansion of online gaming has reflected the overall expansion of computer networks, and virtual worlds A virtual world is a genre of online community that often takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment, through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. Virtual worlds are intended for its users to inhabit and interact, and the term today has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual. Web sites devoted to simple text-based chat remain a small, but singular phenonemon.

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 server:

The following are web front ends (requires e.g. IRC chat server):

See also

References

  1. ^ Wayback Machine Archive: Yahoo Web Chat Listings
  2. ^ Pichat peer-to-peer chat software (Freeware)
  3. ^ psyced | freshmeat.net (Freeware)
  4. ^ P J I R C - "the best free IRC java applet there is" (Freeware)
  5. ^ News - the qwebirc project (Freeware)

External links

Computer-mediated communication Computer-mediated communication is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more networked computers. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (e.g., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms), it has also been applied to other forms of text-based
Online chat Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct one-on-one chat or text-based group chat , using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs. The expression online chat comes from the word chat which means "informal conversation" · Online discussion Online discussion is a relatively new form of communication, facilitated usually by computer networks. The first such communications were on mainframe-based systems such as the PLATO system in the early 1970s. By the mid 1980's, dial-up bulletin board systems or "BBS's" run by hobbyists on personal computers began to host online · Communication software Communication software is used to provide remote access to systems and exchange files and messages in text, audio and/or video formats between different computers or user IDs. This includes terminal emulators, file transfer programs, chat and instant messaging programs, as well as similar functionality integrated within MUDs · Collaborative software Collaborative software is a concept that greatly overlaps with computer-supported cooperative work . Some authors argue they are equivalent. According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999) groupware is part of CSCW, since CSCW addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems." · Social network service A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user , his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and
Asynchronous conferencing Asynchronous conferencing is the formal term used in science, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration and learning, to describe technologies where there is a delay in interaction between contributors. It is used in contrast to synchronous conferencing, which refers to various "chat" systems in which users E-mail Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages across the Internet or other computer networks. Originally, email was transmitted directly from one user to another computer. This required both computers to be online at the same time, a la instant messenger. Today's email systems are based on a store-and- · Electronic mailing list An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list · FidoNet FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet. The network continues to operate but has shrunk considerably, primarily due to the closing of many BBSes.[when?] · Usenet Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; and can · Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are not shown in real-time, to see new messages the forum page must be reloaded. Also, depending on the access level of a user and/or the forum set-up, a posted message · 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 · Bulletin Board System A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users, either through electronic mail
Synchronous conferencing Synchronous conferencing is the formal term used in science, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration and learning, to describe online chat technologies. It has arisen at a time when the term chat had a negative connotation. Today it is occasionally also extended to mean audio/video conferencing or instant messaging systems, Data conferencing Data conferencing refers to a communication session among two or more participants sharing computer data in real time. Interaction and presentation devices such as a screen, keyboard, mouse, camera, etc. can be shared or be able to control each other computer. It is used to distinguish from video conferencing and audio conferencing · Instant messaging Instant messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared software clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as · Internet Relay Chat Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) 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 transfers via Direct Client-to-Client · LAN messenger A LAN messenger is an instant messaging program designed for use within a single local area network · Talker A talker is a chat system that people use to talk to each other over the Internet. Dating back to the 1980s, they were a predecessor of instant messaging · Videoconferencing A videoconference or video conference is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called 'visual collaboration' and is a type of groupware · Voice chat Voice chat is a modern form of communication used on the Internet. The means of communicating with voice chat is through any of the messengers, mainly Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, inSpeak Communicator or Windows Live Messenger.[citation needed] Voice chat has led to a significant increase in distant communications where two or · VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks. Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VOIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, · Web chat · Web conferencing Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings, training, or presentations via the Internet. In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendees' computers or a web-based application where the attendees
Publishing Blog A blog is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a · Wiki Wikis may exist to serve a specific purpose, and in such cases, users use their editorial rights to remove material that is considered "off topic." Such is the case of the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia. In contrast, open purpose wikis accept content without firm rules as to how the content should be organized

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