how does the /r/thebutton timer work?

Question

I'm interested in learning how the guys over at http://reddit.com/r/thebutton did the countdown timer, more precisely, how they transmit that data to the visitor.

My experience with getting info to the browser is limited to ajax requests. Doesn't seem feasible calling for a request every second to get an update, and i can't find evidence of that in the network log. So i'm assuming there is some open channel that just pushes information out?

I'm not sure what to google for and what the terms are to help me learn how this works. Any help in that regard (good tutorials) would be great. Thanks

Answer 1

Button使用Google Visualization API进行Javascript。

该库负责客户端接口和呈现，a Reddit data endpoint处的WebSockets实现处理可视化事件的触发。

这是an overview on using those two technologies together。