After having read most of this thread I'd like to clarify some technicalities.
It's very nice to talk about pusher and slanger without knowing what they facilitate. To keep it simple (which it is), both use the same piece of javascript. So switching between those server endpoints is as easy as changing the configuration of listenening and serving.
Websockets are continuous connections between machines. They can be used to send over data whenever you like. Normal behaviour is that any visitor on a website is registered on some channels and php sends data to these visitors whenever necessary. There are a lot of benefits to using websockets, to mention some:
- truly knowing whether someone is online (green circles talked about around avatars are exact)
- no continuous requests to the server asking questions (ajax)
- direct notifications, not every x minutes, about updates on threads
To give you some dimensions of use, some of you might know battlelog by EA; it uses pusher almost solely. At work I also implemented websockets (at first slanger, proving less stable we moved to pusher) which notifies accounts immediately about any finished tasks once done, shows us a list of all online accounts in real-time and shows us a dashboard of open tickets.. The application is endless using websockets.
I'm a big fan of websockets.
Ps please be aware that pusher is more stable, it also caps maximum payload data. So switching requires you to understand the max length of the data you're sending.
