How GMail works ?!?

[Can Uzun]

Hi;
sorry if this is a re-post.

My question is basically this...
When you receive an email and you already have a GMail page open, it
shows you the new mail without refreshing (or it does that at
background), now my question is this; i am sure my browser is not
querying GMail every second if there is a new email, so their server has
to trigger my browser in some way?!?

I assume; if this can be done with asp.net i can write a chat interface
for my website without using applets. Even if this is not possible i
still want to know how gmail does that, is it possible to use socket
programming with web programming or how?

Thank you for your time...

Can Uzun

 

[Mark Ingram]

Hi;
sorry if this is a re-post.

My question is basically this...

Thank you for your time...

Can Uzun

They use AJAX...

 

[Can Uzun]

They use AJAX...

No, i know they use AJAX but how in the backgroun does it work, as far
as i know there are ajax dlls for .net platform, so can i do the same
thing an asp.net?
Thank you...

 

[Chris Fulstow]

Check out ASP.NET AJAX (aka Atlas):
http://ajax.asp.net/

GMail uses AJAX to periodically poll the server for new messages.

 

[Can Uzun]

Check out ASP.NET AJAX (aka Atlas):
http://ajax.asp.net/

GMail uses AJAX to periodically poll the server for new messages.

So they query the servers all the time, no other triggering mechanism,
this was what i was looking for thank you...

 

[Flinky Wisty Pomm]

<assertion confidence="58%">
They also use an IFrame to which data is continually writen, this
simulates a persistent open connection and removes the need for a poll.

</assertion>

you *can* do something similar with plain ol' AJAX, but I'm willing to
bet that Google have a customised web server for supporting a
persistent connection. Apache 2.0 has an alpha event driven model for
this kind of thang, but IIS so far as I know doesn't have the necessary
infrastructure to build a GMail in the way that Google built it.

If you want to do more complex things than Atlas does out of the box, I
always recommend AJAX.Net professional which is awesomely awesome, but
to get the best use from it, requires a different model for your
code-behind (a *very* clean separation of UI from business-logic and
data tiers) and lots of custom JScript.

 

[Chris Fulstow]

That's right, you can verify this using an HTTP sniffer tool like
Fiddler:
http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/