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.

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, an initialism for Hypertext Mark-up Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects 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 to 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, sometimes written as AJAX , is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications or rich Internet 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 and Flash Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to 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 a scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript for the development of dynamic websites. JavaScript is a dialect of the ECMAScript standard and is characterized as a dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based language with first-class and Actionscript ActionScript is a scripting language based on ECMAScript. ActionScript is used primarily for the development of websites and software using the Adobe Flash Player platform , but is also used in some database applications (such as Alpha Five), and in basic robotics, as with the Make Controller Kit. Originally developed by Macromedia, the language 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 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 forms of computer network. At the present, 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, and virtual worlds The computer accesses a computer-simulated world and presents perceptual stimuli to the user, who in turn can manipulate elements of the modeled world and thus experiences telepresence to a certain degree. Such modeled worlds may appear similar to the real world or instead depict fantasy worlds. The model world may simulate rules based on the real. 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

External links

Computer-mediated communication Computer-Mediated Communication is defined as any communicative transaction which 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 (i.e., 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 real-time 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 software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work
Asynchronous 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, E-mail Electronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use. E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure, • 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 • Internet forum Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of a newsgroup or electronic mailing list ; allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages. Later developments emulated the different newsgroups or individual lists, providing more than one forum, dedicated to a particular topic • 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 • Wiki A wiki is a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet
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 communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet • LAN messenger A LAN messenger is an instant messaging program designed for use within a single local area network • Videoconferencing A videoconference 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. It differs from videophone in that it is designed to serve a conference rather than individuals • 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 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 more • 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, • Talker Talkers are chat systems that people use to talk to each other over the Internet. Dating back to the 1980s, they were a predecessor of instant messaging • Web chat • Web conferencing Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings 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 will simply

Categories: Internet culture Categories: Computing culture | World Wide Web | Subcultures | On-line chat Categories: Computer-mediated communication | Application layer protocols | Web browsers Categories: Web software | Browsers | HTTP clients | Communication software

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers Wikipedia is an online open-content collaborative encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of human knowledge. The structure of the project allows anyone with an Internet connection to alter its content. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by]
This page was last archived by our server on Mon Jul 6 20:48:57 2009. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Web Chat' News
Secret-Shopper Expedition Reveals Live Chat Trends - ECommerce-Guide
ecommerce-guide.com
Secret-Shopper Expedition Reveals Live Chat Trends

ECommerce-Guide, United States

Smith observed that most retailers prominently display toll-free numbers, but they tend to bury chat buttons and e-mail tools several layers deep in the Web site. Smith found a significant range of both agent and information consistency from one ...
Google News Search: Web chat,
Tue Jun 23 19:11:54 2009
[Hide]▲