What is the best platform for an online chat room?

Question

I have decided that I want to take a stab at creating a "game" that is just in a nutshell a chat room with lots of features for people to play 'paper DnD' online. Obviously there is a lot more to it and I'm looking to add a lot of features but anyways keep in mind that I'm a solo developer so quick development times are great.

I started learning Flash (AS3 using the Flash CS4 IDE) recently and figured that Flash would be a great platform for this kind of project but once I started looking into socket servers with AS3 API I was wowed at how much they cost. I'm looking at around $700!

What came to mind next was Java, though I don't have much experience with actual java I do have experience with J2ME and I have watched the whole Stanford programming lecture series about java too. I do enjoy java syntax :)

PHP also came to mind but I want to be able to have graphics too so that's not too realistic.

So what platform (any platform not just the ones I mentioned) would be best for a solo developer to get his feet wet in creating a very interactive chat application?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Google talk uses libjingle a C++ library to manage its protocol Jingle.

Answer 2

A decent chat program could be written in any platform but the normal rules of web development apply.

That is, if you use flash, java or silverlight you may get some increased functionalitym however users will have to have a plugin installed to participate.

On the other hand HTML, jQuery and a server side language such as Ruby, PHP or Python would be enough to build your web app and you could be sure that it would be accessible to anyone.

Take a look at this tutorial for a simple example.