WhosOn Live Chat and 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).
• Is secured using SSL - so the live chat is as secure as your checkout pages.

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