[thelist] iframes?

[Chris W. Parker]

george donnelly <mailto:list at zettai.net> wrote:

> hi all
>
> i need to implement what is basically a one-way chat. My client is
> going to cover a sporting event and wants a real-time log of his
> comments to show up on the front page of his website be scrollable.
>
> my first thought for presentation was an iframe. this will go inside
> a div on a page laid out in css.
>
> does anyone have any experience with this? suggestions? thanks!

i don't really have suggestions as to a solution but i can offer some
thoughts on your idea.

if you have an iframe you will need to reload the document to the new
content to show up right? will the user be refreshing the page whenever
they want to or will the page refresh automatically? if it refreshes
automatically, how often? every second? every 5 seconds? etc.? i would
imagine that 10-15 seconds between refreshes might not be too bad. but
at the same time if he is writing long content, that may still be too
short for some people to read between updates.

maybe you could do it with flash? update an external text file on the
server and then have flash update it's display every second or
something. it would probably look pretty clean and not have any visual
distractions(i.e. a refresh delay).

hth.

chris.