WhosOn & Ajax

The WhosOn Live Chat feature uses a technology called AJAX (shorthand for Asynchronous Javascript and XML). In fact, WhosOn has always used it - even before the term was coined.

What Does This Mean?

When a visitor to your website requests a chat session using WhosOn, they do not need to download anything. The Chat Client is simply a special type of web page that uses AJAX to send and receive the chat text.

This has a number of advantages:

• The visitor does not need any type of 'plug in' (for example, many chat systems use Java - which means the chat wont work if Java is not enabled in the visitor's browser).
• The chat will work regardless of the visitors firewall - because all communication is via standard HTTP on port 80.
• The visitor will not see any sort of flickering or page refreshes.
• The chat client is small and lightweight.
• It will work on all browser types (IE 5, 6 & 7, Firefox 1 & 2, Opera, Safari and others).

The WhosOn Chat Client is developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The source code is available for registered users who want to make customizations.