Autoupdate "Push" to standard web browser...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Oscar Thornell
  • Start date Start date
O

Oscar Thornell

Hi,

I am looking for a technique where you from the serverside push/update a
standard web browser with small piceces of data. An exempel could be sports
result or stock exchange information.

I do not want to use Java Applets, ActiveX controls or force the clients to
download .NET Assemblies (and install the .NET Runtime...)

If at all possible I do not want to use some sort of Javascript loop where a
client script executes at certain time intervals and checks for new data...

I want the server to keep track of the clients/session and target them with
data specific to their user profiles...

Is this possible?
Where do I start looking?

Regards
/Oscar
 
The only way to truly get a "push" going is to have your local computer set
up with a port listener, which the server can connect to in order to
broadcast information to. Otherwise, the server has nothing to connect to,
and hence no way to communicate anything. So, your options are to implement
such a listener (which you don't want to do) or else simulate a listener by
polling occasionally (which you also don't want to do), so in this situation
you have to choose the lesser of two evils. It's less invasive (and asking
less of your users) to have a polling mechanism - setting up a listening
service increases the attack surface of your users' machines. How you
implement that are the mechanisms that you enumerated - you need code
running on the users' machines, be it script, ActiveX, or JVM/.NET embedded
applications.
 
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