Webchat: Flash or Java or HTML5 or other? [closed]

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I want to start to make a chat client that runs in web browsers, upon a colleges requests. Its my first time doing something like this, so i made some research about this mostly about HTML5. I did research on the platform itself, how fast and how used it is, but my most important factor was: mobile support

I plan to develop this chat for a long while for experience because, as a coder/programmer I am still inexperienced.So i was thinking in the future as well. i have a forum community with pretty limited chat access. I want to change that as well, and as an extra include mobile support.

i researched Flash, java and HTML5, the two most obvious choice in web applications, and pretty much the new comer HTML5.

Flash is more widely used as web app(at least what i saw and found.), and its more designer oriented than programmer, but many chats are written in this, and are used. but there is no mobile support for it, to my knowledge. thats hinders my future plans.

Java, is a robust programming language, and saw a few webchats in this, but my main issue with this is performance: its much slower than flash. But at least there is mobile support, at least the android mobiles.

as for HTML5....its pretty much still a child, not all web browsers support it fully but the major ones support web socket already, except IE9. and IE9 is the most used web browser, sadly. And i cant find any support for it on mobiles yet.

And i don't know any other platforms out there in the Internet that could do the same as the above three, but i'm open.

So my question is: Which is the best platform for writing a webchat, that lest me do mobile support at a latter stage?

Answer 1

You cannot write a chat in HTML 5 alone (because it operates on the client and there needs to be server code), you would need PHP or JSP for that.

I wouldn't use flash except if you are already very proficient in it because:

• it needs an extra plugin
• it frequently blocks or crashes some browsers
• I think it is difficult to develop and I am not sure if the development software is free

So my choice would be Java Applet by default. It needs an extra plugin but it is much more stable than flash and you need it for many applications anyways but it has so much functionality that is very easy to make a chat with it.

P.S.: Java's speed is absolutely no problem for a chat. Java is maybe 10% behind C++ depending on the application but we are talking about languages like Flash or PHP so Java is not slower but it doesn't matter anyways because a chat has next to no resource requirements.

Answer 2

No, the correct answer is: Understand which method is quick to deploy, cost-effective and easy to learn. You'll need to integrate languages to make this work. HTML 5 is the latest and greatest, that's one. JAVA ~ still in demand on the Android side..learn it.. Flash is dying..don't learn that.

Windows ~ .NET..don't count this out...Microsoft is planning on coming out with a mobile platform...this is still good to learn..always learn a language that's going to give you job opportunities in the future.

Answer 3

The correct answer is: it depends. You can implement such a program using many technologies. Each of these technologies have different characteristics and pros and cons but you have mentioned that this is going to be made for a university task. This way i recommend you to choose HTML5, this is a quite new technology, i think it worths it to have a little experience in that! If you want to have the least work with this project, you should use java. This is MY opinion.

Answer 4

You should have a look at nodejs:

http://nodejs.org/

Also the socket.io module for nodejs which allows you to use websockets as a transport mechanism for capable browsers and provides fallback methods for older browsers:

http://socket.io/

There's a node and socket.io chat tutorial which might be helpful and a working chat demo based on node (though I couldn't see any reference to socket.io when I reviewed the code).

Answer 5

I would not discount using Flash. It is still an industry standard in web development. It is way faster than a Java applet, but you are right, Java is not going anywhere. Flash allows you to deploy your project to the web, stand alone application on Mac and PC, and on mobile.