Real-Time Push ::: RE: vancouver ruby on rails conference

[Parks, Raymond]

Stephen Guerin wrote:
> Just van de Broecke has been demonstrating what he calls "pushlets" since
> about 1998. Is it any different?
> http://www.pushlets.com/

   From the pushlets site -

"Using Pushlets with  AJAX  may facilitate development event more in the
future. try the Pushlet example that uses XMLHttpRequest. Very few
source lines needed  view the source of this example."

   Apparently, it is different enough to reduce the source code size.

--
Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
IORTA Department            Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

[Giles Bowkett]

Most of Ajax has been around in one form or another for years, but
it's only recently gelled as a way to do things because many of the
solutions were clunky or browser-specific.

I can't say for sure but it looks as if "pushlets" were Ajax before
the term. It looks as if the difference with pushlets is that pushlets
appear to have been a few years ahead of their time but without the
simplicity of implementation to become widespread. Every good book on
Ajax that I've seen mentions that some of these techniques have been
available for a long time. Microsoft had a thing called <iframes>
which made Ajax-style techniques available to sites which didn't mind
excluding users of other browsers. The thing is, I was around when
<iframe> was around, I knew about the tag and didn't even bother to
learn it, because custom tags are useless if your goal is
cross-browser compatibility, and most companies at the time had that
goal.

Lightstreamer seems more in line with the current industry standard
approach to Comet but there's a possibility the Flash hack has
advantages because of its simplicity. The Flash hack requires minimal
server investment and zero client investment. Instead of buying a
proprietary application server, you write a few lines of code. All the
Flash socket does is receive JavaScript code and pass it to the
browser. It's just a message, just a few text strings. Likewise,
instead of asking the user to download a plugin, you use a plugin they
already have (the Flash installed user base is something like 97% of
all Web users). The change in development process, infrastructure, and
required technologies is virtually nil. This means it's easier for
developers to create, easier for sysadmins to keep running, and easier
for users to adopt.

Then again I don't know much about either of these alternatives, they
could have strengths I'm unaware of.

As far as the source code size thing, XMLHttpRequest is the standard
technique for Ajax.

I should point out also that the terminology is all kind of silly.
First of all JavaScript has very little to do with Java. Then there's
Ajax -- "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" -- in fact it's just
asynchronous JS and text. Comet -- named after a cleaning product,
because you can go to a store and pick up Ajax and Comet and they're
almost the same thing. The Rails guys are calling their Flash hack
"Armageddon," probably because it's what they're going to do when the
Comet hits. (Or something.) The whole thing's gotten a bit out of
hand, but in terms of what you can do with it, it's pretty neat.

http://www.fluxiom.com/ <----- entirely browser-based asset management
system for graphic design companies. Thomas Fuchs, who did most of the
JS code in Rails, was the lead guy for this. when I first saw Gmail, I
thought, somebody should do this with the operating system too -- make
it possible for you to put tags on your files, instead of storing them
in hierarchical folders -- that's basically what Fluxiom is.


--
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org


On 4/26/06, Raymond Parks <rcparks at sandia.gov> wrote:

> Stephen Guerin wrote:
> > Just van de Broecke has been demonstrating what he calls "pushlets" since
> > about 1998. Is it any different?
> > http://www.pushlets.com/
>
>    From the pushlets site -
>
> "Using Pushlets with  AJAX  may facilitate development event more in the
> future. try the Pushlet example that uses XMLHttpRequest. Very few
> source lines needed  view the source of this example."
>
>    Apparently, it is different enough to reduce the source code size.
>
> --
> Ray Parks                   rcparks at sandia.gov
> IDART Project Lead          Voice:505-844-4024
> IORTA Department            Mobile:[phone]
> http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
> http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288
>
>
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