My team is currently working on a webchat project. But we have very limited knowledge on creating chat programs.
The requirements are the following..
1. The remote client can access us via web and chat with us.
2. Our office will answer their inquiries using client-side windows form-type of app.
Questions:
1. Is it possible to have web-based and winform interactions.How? via what type of service?
2. Web is quite frustrating becuase of its stateless nature. Any ideas on the issues that we might face?
Is is it nice to use timer to ensure connectivity? what is the best alternative to timer? how about databindings, partial postback, callback, events,etc. i'd like to know which of these can help us most.
3. What are the best practices in creating chat programs most esp when web is involve?.
4. We don't know yet how to design our server and client apps and we are contemplating on using WCF though we are totally unaware of this technology..Will this solve our prob?
We have not yet decided on the type of platform to use. We have ideas about socket programming and simple chat windows but the integration with web is quiet obscure.I had chat programs before with my previous company using XMPP protocol, but everything was easy then, in my current work we dont have server setup for IMs. Any advice are deeply appreciated..thanks