Sunday, March 12th, 2006
Gabbly - Embedded Website Chat
Gabbly (via Digg) is a new application that embeds a chat window in any web page. It seems to be based on web proxying and iframes: You think you’re looking at the target website, e.g. digg.com, but you’re actually looking at gabbly.com with an iframe for digg.com and an iframe above that for the chat window. The URL in this case is http://gabbly.com/digg.com.
The system is similar to Quek, which does something similar but with little Quek avatars running around the page. Unfortunately, it’s never been that stable.
Also, WizLite does web page annotation, but relies on either a bookmarklet or a browser extension. With both Wizlite and Gabbly, website authors can also choose to embed the special content on their pages by including some Javascript.
Very cool idea, the chat interface does seem very cluttered though. It could also do with some kind of popular sites feature or something.
why not embed the chat directly into the website (with an iframe)?
that’s what i’m doing with http://chat.sifu.co.at.
oh… sorry, now i get it! so forget my question/comment. :-}
Quek is as stable as it gets, as far as I know. It has been running for four years now continuously.
If anyone has stability problems using Quek, please let us know.
I can’t help but find Gabbly rather useless and annoying. I can’t really say I’ve ever been at a website before and though, “Gee, I wish I could chat with other people browsing this webiste right now… about this website.” … Most large websites (the only ones where you’d be likely to find more than one person browsing through this thing) that have ANY reason for chat or forums, already have chat or forums. Other than that, if I want to talk to people, I’ll go to the sites already designated for that.
WizLite seems useful, though. Especially in a collaborative research environment.
[…] Read the full article Technorati Tags: Ajax, Ajaxian, Chat, Web 2.0, Javascript […]
This would be useful if there was some way to have notices or focus/whatever when a new guest entered a particular ‘room’ (domain?). That would make it almost the equivalent of a help-desk, with zero installation or even registration from the website integrating it. Might be a nice marketing direction for them.
Mike: except, that only works if site owners embrace it. And as a site owner, if you wanted that sort of functionality, why not go with one of the live help chat packages out there that are specifically developed for that sort of thing and have a bunch of relevant features that this thing lacks? I just fail to see the usefulness of Gabbly… it’s a novelty… nothing more.
It isn’t usefull at all!
Well, It was neat to play with… Except for the constant and annoying posts of avi, flash animations, and pictures, etc. To make it worse, the movies and flash would reload on EVERY post. With the ability to push these things to me, my concern is the potential for some ***hole to run code arbitrarily through the client’s browser. Any thoughts?
This type of serive may not seem “useful”, and it’s not actually anything new (there is a Firefox extension that does this which has been available for some time now), but this is just one more provider foreshadowing the future of the social, surfer-owned and operated internet.
The functionality of a site (and of these services) will be evolved by the users. The site creators will just put up the shell and maintain the brand while the denizens flesh out much (or most) of the content and functionality with collabrative read/write techniques and portable widgets. It’s coming.
4th word = “service”
If I had a ‘brochure-ware’ site, with no back-end and no technical expertise, I would definitely embrace this as a tool, since my only ‘installation’ would be to create a link on a page to the gabbly url. Right now this is just a ‘proof-of-concept’, but I can see this becoming quite mature.
SECURITY ALERT: gabbly.com allows a bad guy to post and … tags in the chat. This is a major security hole. I alerted the gabbly guys. They said they will fix it soon.
Until they fix this you’re running a serious security risk to your machine and the network you’re on by running gabbly chats.
OK the comment sanitizer ate my comments so I’ll try to post the above without triggering him :)
The gabbly chat allows you to post Javascript script tags (in fact it allows pretty much any HTML). As I said, the gabbly guys are working on a fix.
Jacob, how can Gabbly be a security risk to your machine and/or network? They haven’t touched the digg.com code itself, obviously. The chat is running in its own iframe, there is no way the chat code can touch the site it is projected upon.
It’s just an iframe running some script… nothing to be afraid of… the worst thing that can happen is that the Gabbly chat itself is taken over by malicious script. But that script cannot escape from its iframe.
If I’m missing something please be so kind as to tell me what exactly.
[…] There are many chat applications in the market but Gabbly is different. It allows one to add chat feature to any web site without much hassle. Ajaxian.com has a detailed review of Gabbly. […]
Just wanted to clarify one thing. We do not proxy. Nothing other than the chat traffic goes through us. We wouldn’t have survived being dugg if we had to proxy all the users’ content through us.
Who will you be your target market and what will be your asking rate? Will this service be free?
This is a simple one with source code :
http://www.linb.net/schat/schat.html
too bad the original dev team from Gabbly is gone! The site is totally slow now if it is up at all… What to use now???
It seems to be based on web proxying and iframes: You think you?re looking at the target website, e.g. digg.com, but you?re actually looking at gabbly.com with an iframe for digg.com and an iframe above that for the chat window.
how can i have a chat interface for my websites?
There are lot of tools available free on web that can be useful.
yup..this site uses it..but embedded -
http://nitchi.50webs.com
Here’s another completely ajax chat room that you can easily embed into your website or blog. Once inside a chat room simply copy paste the embed code into your website or blog and viola, instant chat. This chat has some other nifty social networking features and user’s don’t have to register in order to start chatting right away.
The website for the above chat room to easily embed in your site is at http://www.livehubs.com
I think you make more blogs for this type. Than we take a lots of information for it.I think it’s understandable that these transit workers feel shortchanged by this request given the years of service they’ve given the system.
Can anyone let me know how i can incorporate a chat interface on my website.
Thanks,
Gaurav
Paul, you should use something like chatlet.net that integrates with your website and allows you to chat with your visitors, and provide online help. Chatlet.net is free.
I recommend using FlashChat, it’s a nice and complete script. we are using it right now and it works fine.