Anyone know how Facebook Keeps the Chat Window Open During Page Loads

I’ve been building a chat program similar to Facebook (not as powerful but enough for my client) and have been studying FB’s version and one thing just boggles my mind, how in the heck do they keep the chat window open as you move around the site?

At first I thought they were just reloading sections of the site, not an actual page load but then the more I played around with it the more I found that wasn’t the case.

The ONLY thing I can come up with is they have managed to open a new tab, sized it to their requirements and ‘attached it’ to the bottom of the browser (would probably also have to play with the stacking order of the tabs too)

So anyone have any idea? I am really curious about this

They are reloading sections of the site. You can tell the difference because clicking on the topleft Facebook logo does a soft reload retaining the chat window, and clicking the browser refresh icon does a full reload of the page.

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You know I never thought to try the refresh button on the browser but you are correct, thanks for pointing that out

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