WebSockets vs Server-Sent Events vs Long-polling

Apparently social networking is the banner of the nowadays web. Everybody intends bringing some features into his projects. Some of them require immediate notification. That is getting common, if you open a page with upcoming messages (status feed, notification subsystem, friends-list), you expected them being updated as soon as a new message (status, notification, friend-making action) arrives. As you well know, original web design allowed only one-way client-server communication (one requests, another one responds), though now HTML5 working group doing their best to fix it or rather to patch it. However, the web-projects are still using long-polling trick to emulate server-client communication.

Well, now new web browser versions appear every few months. Besides they update automatically. Thus a huge number of users have the latest browser versions, which support HTML 5 communication APIs. Is that the time to put long-polling away? Let’s find out.