# anchors, Server Push and Refresh

[Garance A Drosehn]

Josep Egea <jes at rednsi.com> writes:
> Given this scenario, when our customer asked for a chat in his
> web, an IRC client (probably the best suited solution) wasn't
> viable, as they wanted it to be accessible directly from browsers.
> Given this, we should choose between plug-in based products (which
> effectively reduce the possible users to some browsers and
> platforms, being even more contrary to web spirit) or use Java,
> that, though being more open, it's still a limitation (see Win
> 3.1 users and OmniWeb for example).

For what it's worth, some of my friends have a chat system called
"lily" (even have a web site at www.lily.org), and they have a few
lily clients written for unix.  While everyone talked about writing
clients for Macs & PC's, no one actually got around to doing any.

Once Java came along, several people have tried to write some lily
clients as Java applets.  While they have some which work, they
have found it frustrating to try and come up with code that actually
works on all Java-enabled browsers.  So, while we're still committed
to the idea of using Java for such work, development on such clients
is idle right now, partially waiting for Java 1.1 to become
commonplace.

---
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =     gad at eclipse.its.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer        (MIME & NeXTmail capable)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;           Troy NY    USA