I can't offer any solid advice, but I CAN tell you that meebo.com does
I got the impression the OP was looking for a code library to do this on
their own page - I don't think meebo will be of any help there. GTalk I
don't know about.
I wasn't holding them up as tutorial sites - I was holding them up as
examples of a "simple instant messaging interface". Tho meebo is not
very simple.
libsfan didn't seem to know if it was even possible,
so I wanted to show a couple examples.
Although that is probably one of the better solutions, it CAN be done
without Ajax. Although I don't think there would be much need for js at
that point
Sure, you could use an IFRAME or something like that too. Ajax would
probably be quickest, tho. Besides, it's hip and cool and web 2.0!
Just a quick caveat - something like this would be fine for a relatively
small application, but using Ajax would require some sort of polling of
the server (looking for updates), and that could get VERY
traffic-intensive on a busy site.
Not to mention it usually causes the browser to freeze for a second
when it initiates the poll, which is something that drives me nuts with
GTalk. But he did ask for something simple. Meebo uses a much more
sophisticated constant connection, but that requires some fairly heavy
duty configuration on the server side which is an 'eek!' zone for me!
Tyler
