The chatterbox will never be Ajax-based for two reasons. First, Pair.com does not allow "chat servers" in its terms of use. The CB already is on the very border of that in my opionion

This is especially true of the Java based CB client.

Second, the server load would multiply if every page that a browser has open on Perlmonks would reload all the time.

Since JavaScript can span a user session & not only a window - there's no reason to open more than one connection per user session. However it would still be the rough equivalent of everyone running the Java client. And that certainly would increase the load. It could be throttled however to a slow refresh rate. I suppose it's all a matter of a breakeven point of performance vs. load. Clearly this isn't a big win scenario either way.

Voting however, could certainly be implemented using AJAX. That could significantly reduce load especially on long threads, since the only data you'd be requesting back would be related to voting, rather than resending all of the content.