Let’s say you want to check automatically if there is a new comment to add it automatically at the bottom of an article.
Long-polling means you would check every Х seconds if there is something new, with web-sockets comments can come in automatically as they are posted
Websockets have two advantages.
They have much less overhead, which results in a better network performance
They allow the server to send data that the client hasn’t explicitly requested.
The second one is the most important advantage.
In AJAX, everything the server sends must be the response to a previous request by the client, and every request can only be answered once.
But in many applications, especially multi-user applications, events happen on the server and these events must be pushed to the clients immediately.
There are workarounds for that in AJAX, like delaying the answer to a request until there is something to report (long-polling), but these are quite dirty.
That’s why there are WebSockets.
With a WebSocket connection, the server can send messages to the clients when it wants and as often as it wants, without having to wait for a request from the client.
But unfortunately, WebSockets also have disadvantages:
They aren’t as well-supported by web development frameworks
yet
Not all web browsers support it
but most desktop browsers already do
Many proxies and reverse-proxies can’t relay WebSocket traffic
yet
Usage
Websockets are a powerful technology and could certainly cater to the limited use cases but there can be compatibility problems with older browsers and network intermediaries.
In fact, some folks even recommend having an HTTP fallback in case Websockets isn’t supported.
Unless you have requirements that necessitate WebSockets, such as full-duplex bi-directional communications, for example, you might be better off using existing AJAX-based solutions.
If you have requirements to push notifications to your user interface, WebSockets can be a good idea, but if you are literally looking for form submission and auto-complete, then these problems have already been solved using Ajax