The Product
Chatjet offers an enormous number of options and is characterized by its high speed
and incomparable flexibility, among other things.
Tour
Take part in a brief tour through the options of Chatjet and see how it effortlessly deals
with a large variety of completely different requirements.
Take the tour
Background information
No matter whether you're dealing with a finance community, a portal site,
a corporate homepage or a flirt-site - webchats are a welcome (and useful!) addition to
sites all over the Internet. After all, webchats don't only attract new
participants or clients, but also strengthen existing bonds permanently. And what more
could you wish for if you're running a site than to have your site visitors coming back
time after time?
However, after the decision to offer a chat has been taken, website providers are
often confronted with a problem: there's a lack of suitable solutions. In many cases,
a java applet is simply integrated into the site.
Integrated? Not really - because in most cases, the gray, inflexible boxes or pop-ups
simply do not fit into the carefully designed site appearance. Not to mention customization
or special wishes, which are almost impossible to realize with this technique.
This is clearly no way to differentiate a site from its competitors.
Of course, there were and there are alternatives. In some cases, users are asked to
download a complete, customized chat program - which of course significantly raises the
barrier for the user to get to know the chat. On other sites, you find dull, antiquated CGI chats.
Sooner or later, users express their dissatisfaction. Hardly anyone really wants
to use java applets when all they do is crash your browser. And there is even less
willingness to download an entire program and to install it.
All these makeshift solutions and obstacles have always bothered us - and might
have irritated you as well at some time.
That is why we developed Chatjet.
What does Chatjet have to offer?
Chatjet is based on a completely new approach. No slow applets are used -
neither on the server, nor on the user's side. We also refrained from designing
Chatjet as an add-on to existing webserver software (CGI or similar).
Chatjet is stand-alone server software. It contains a complete
HTTP webserver which is configured specifically for the technical requirements of
a webchat. The server core was Assembler-optimized by hand, and therefore is
lightning-fast even for enormous numbers of participants.
On the basis of this server core, the system delivers a special HTML frameset
to the webbrowser of the user, which among other things contains the chat messages.
The interesting aspect of this approach is: anything that the system delivers can be
managed by you.
This means that the user doesn't have to install any plugins or add-ons, but still
gets a rapid-response chat which can contain all of the features which can be displayed
in a web browser. This opens up completely new possibilities. For instance,
the system can play a sound or make a spaceship fly across the screen
when a user enters the chat, or the current stock market information can be displayed in
a window.
All of the messages, news, and actions which the server delivers to the user
can be adapted to specific needs in terms of language, form, and color. These
settings do not have to apply to the entire server, but can instead be defined per
room.
This means that you can use your website to run a German flirt-chat with the
option of displaying photos at the same time as you run an English-language finance-chat
with a completely different design and functionality.
But that's not all. Chatjet offers interfaces and extensions in every possible
direction. You want to create a closed staff chat in your corporate intranet? No problem -
at the end of the meeting, you can even have Chatjet automatically distribute
fax protocols of the meeting. For paying communities (e.g. for providers of
erotic sites), Chatjet can be linked without any problems to existing bookkeeping
systems by using the integrated ODBC interface.
Technical / Requirements
Chatjet is a completely stand-alone server system - it does not require any other
web server software, nor does it need any runtime libraries. The server core consists
of a compact executable file which runs natively on the server operating system. No
overhead, no loss of speed.
For the first time, this makes it possible to run webchat systems with extremely high
numbers of users. Furthermore, the hardware requirements of the system are extremely
modest - theoretically, the system can run on a 486 with 16 MB of RAM.
Our recommendation for server equipment, which leaves enough room for chat sessions with
large numbers of users, is a Pentium III with 512 MB of RAM.
Chatjet is available on two platforms, for each of which it has been perfectly optimized:
Windows NT / 2000
In order to run the software, a WindowsNT/2000 system with a current
service pack is necessary. In order to tie in external databases, the
corresponding ODBC drivers should be available.
For testing and/or for the developer version, Windows9x is sufficient.
Chatjet needs a static IP as well as a free TCP/IP port
(ideally, port 80).
As mentioned previously, our system runs completely independently from
other NT services, meaning that IIS etc. are not necessary.
Linux (x86)
Chatjet works with all known Linux distributions. An update of the
glibc may be necessary in the case of older distributions.
Chatjet under Linux has native support for its internal database as well as
for mySql. Further databases can be linked using the appropriate drivers.
As with the NT version, a free IP is needed. In order to enable Chatjet to
tie itself to port 80, root-rights are required on the server which is to be installed.
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