Is “long polling” the most efficient way to create a Web Real Time App?

Question

I want to create an application like this:

http://collabedit.com/

What is the most efficient way to create this real time application?

Flash? Long pollin

Answer 1

I don't think long-polling is most efficient way to do Comet. Anyway, it sends new HTTP request after response is got. It cost more extra HTTP requests than HTTP streaming.

But, long-polling might be more reliable and easier to implement than HTTP streaming. According to this article in Google Code, HTTP streaming might not be functional if intermediate HTTP proxy buffers content.

It is interesting that GMail doesn't use long-polling. With the help of Http sniffer, it is clear that it uses HTTP streaming for Comet.