Wombat Mobile I should be coding or sleeping instead of this...

I've been searching for a good Ajax chatroom for a while for a site that I run. I originally had a Java chat applet in place, but it wouldn't work with everyone's browsers.

After installing several of them and getting feedback from users, we've settled on phpFreeChat until something better comes along.

Here's a list of the Ajax PHP chatrooms that we evaluated with a few comments:

• phpFreeChat
  This chatroom had the best response time and was almost as peppy as a java chat applet. It had the least lag of all the ones that we tried, which was probably the most important factor in picking this one.
  
  There are several other nice features, though, including using either mysql or the filesystem, private rooms, themes, smileys, intuitive interface, and more. There's also a very good forum for support or customization questions.
  
  
• AjaxChat
  This chatroom was very close to what we were looking for, and we're still using it as a backup chatroom. It seems to have a little more lag than phpFreeChat, though.
  
  One interesting feature is the use of avatars, which is very fun, but once we had 5-6 people in a chat session, the avatars became annoying as they took up too much space, and the messages scrolled by way too quickly. It also is mysql based, which is a plus.
  
  
• Ajax Sunset Chat
  This chat app is very cool because it doesn't look like any other chatroom. It's basically a bunch of avatars sitting at a bar with "talk bubbles" appearing above them as you type. It was very fun at first, but kind of hard to follow a conversation with more than one person.
  
  
• Chatr
  
  
• Chategory

Also, here's a couple of Flash IRC clients:
Net-Bits.Net
WFIC

And here's a list of java applet chat clients.