It would be interesting if someone kept working on this. Or started something similar. From the thread above, it sounds like if it is changed to actually depend on user interaction somehow, and somehow ignore if the tab isn’t open, it could work ok for a small forum and not be too server intensive.
Why when there’s Pusher, websockets, etc.? It’s easier. And last time I used Pusher I got errors. And, I don’t like using third party services. Plus, why not? Why not experiment with polling?
I feel like, with coding, where there’s a will, there’s a way. There’s probably a way to make polling somewhat efficient. Maybe not. But, maybe.