[mchahn]

Server-sent-events are an often overlooked alternative to polling and websockets. They work on all browsers and I'm having good luck using them.

[dspillett]

I thought that got dropped from "HTML5" and was considered deprecated?

It was never implemented directly in IE or Edge (http://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource), so when you say "work in all browsers" do you discount IE or can you recommend a good well-supported polyfill?