How does in-browser chat work?

Question

Just curious. How exactly does chatting in a browser work? Usually if a user goes to a web page, his/her webbrowser requests the page content. A server produces output and s

Answer 1

It uses AJAX - a client-side javascript running on the GMail user's browser sends and receives the messages from the Google server, and writes them to the browser window - no reload of the page required.