Installing Debian is nothing. Getting your sound to work and getting the desktop to display at the right resolution is a bitch. Getting a laptop to work correctly is hard.
It took me about two hours to get Debian working properly on my brand-X el-cheapo laptop... counting from when I walked out of the store with it.
Hopefully I managed to pick the right output from AcronymFinder. Looks like this is a technology that lets you route telephone calls within an organisation.
It looks like Google Local is still US only... and they keep ***ing redirecting me to the UK site so I can't even see the link to click it. (I'm not planning a trip to American in the near future - but I might have been).
Slashdot isn't exactly a great example of clean HTML (i.e. this page wouldn't be so big if it was better written in the first place), and I really wouldn't like to try to pass in new posts using JavaScript. Lets look at what you would need to do:
(This is pretty rough and ready)
Pass a token back to the server that the server can use to work out all new posts since the page was created.
Pass all the new posts back to the client including information about their parent node.
Pass the new score of all posts which have changed their score back to the client along with the data for those nodes.
Work out where each post needs to go in the threaded view and insert it there... if the threshold is low enough
Show posts which have had their score increased enough to display.
Hide posts which have had their score lowered enough to hide.
This would be a lot of processing for the client and there would be rather a lot of jerking around of content. Not to mention the fun of trying to get this to work sanely in a bunch of different browsers.
Oh, and you can't intercept the Refresh request, so you would have to provide a button on the page for it... and users would have to learn the new UI to retrieve new data... and they would have to learn a different technique for every site that implements it slightly differently.
You should solve the problem by writing better HTML rather then trying to avoid downloading it.
Why?
The user agent is going to have to download it at some stage (if only for the first access), so you'll get significant benefits there.
Lighter HTML is going to be a lot easier to maintain, so you'll save yourself development time.
HTML doesn't demand a great deal from user agents, so you aren't going to be demanding that users find a JavaScript capable webbrowser. The browsers on many portable devices do not support JavaScript, and there are been recomendations that people disable JavaScript in thier browsers for security reasons (mainly due to the problems that keep being found in Internet Explorer's scripting engine).
By using technology that works everywhere, you increase your potential market and therefore also increase potential profits.
OK How about this: Even when you do page reloads or load new pages, it saves on bandwidth. A new page that doesn't change the header/footer/sidebar doesn't have to reload any of those items.
In other words: lets reinvent frames using JavaScript.
Frames are not commonly used thanks to severe drawbacks with the concept. Using JS to implement that concept instead of HTML doesn't remove the drawbacks.
Well, that is still way too big for a webpage. With the exception of sites where images are the purpose (or video, etc), 30k is about the maximum you should be using - and why on earth aren't your images being cached?
Ok, change that number to 4K and reread the post.
I value reliability rather more then saving about 2 seconds of reaction time.
So would you rather download <1K to get the new cost in your cart, or download 100K of HTML and images and have the screen flash to get the new cost? As a web host, would you rather serve 1K or 100K?
If your HTML document containing little more then a list of products is 100 kilobytes, then its very very badly written. You should solve the problem by writing better HTML rather then trying to avoid downloading it.
So (some) Vendors want it, and (some) Web Developers want it becuase the Vendors (their clients) want it - but does it bring any serious benefit to the end user?
Changing product images is a reasonable thing to do - but all that needs is a change in the src of the <img> (Or you can take the thinkgeek approach and have nice, large images that show lots of details and that a full page reload doesn't add any significant bandwidth needs to)
1-minute rotation? How long to people spend on a single page that they aren't reading carefully (and don't want to be distracted)? Just pick a special at random with each new page. Amazon has a "related produts" which works rather well IMO.
I accept your point about the price calculations, for things where the postage et al isn't simple there could be some benefit. However, do people really fiddle the quantities up and down so much that the occasional reload is going to be a noticable detraction of service?
I can't say that I'm really pro-Flash or pro-Iframes (OK, I'm very much against them), but you say "Iframes are never a good idea." without giving any reasons - I can think of quite a few reasons why Iframes are a bad idea - but this JavaScript solution has all of those problems too - but with worse browser support!
And did you read the list of supported browsers? Only notable omission in the real world was safari...
I would really love it if it weren't so - but not everybody upgrades to the latest and greatest version of their browser. Some people still use Netscape 4. (And Safari was on the list).
repopulate your product page for a new product WITHOUT reloading the whole page.
So now people can't bookmark specific products
Put a timer in, and have rotating feature products WITHOUT reloading the whole page on a timer.
Useful from a commercial point of view. Really rather distracting from a visitor point of view. If I can't block it, I'm likely to find another vendor.
Update your totals in your chckout / shopping cart WITHOUT reloading the whole page.
This sounds practical, but at some stage you need to send the user to a new page anyway, and you can calculate new totals without having to make server calls - so you might as well leave telling the server about it until they go to the next stage of the checkout process.
Write an RSS news ticker in html rather than flash...
Ummm... why would you want an RSS new ticker on a webpage in the first place?
Basically anything that you might have used flash or an IFrame for, you could do with this, javascript and a DIV tag... Pretty important news (if you write commercial websites)
Yes, lets just create something with no practical advantages over Flash/Iframe, but which requires a more recent browser to access.
Of course, individual distros could negotiate a different license. (Debian couldn't though, they're guidelines don't allow "special exception for Debain" licenses).
I wonder if Real are positioning themselves to get their client distributed with distributions. We might finally see Fedora (et al) with an mp3 player.
I wonder what the license says about redistributing the client? Would Fedora et al be able to distribute it?
In the meantime, I'll stick to Gentoo since they are happy to provide source code for all sorts of mp3 players.
I've tested this myself. Put up a fresh brand new install of XP. Before I could even start patching it, I had worms homing in.
This is why I love my external ethernet/ADSL router and didn't bother getting a USB speedtouch thing.
I wouldn't run Windows at all, but its the price you pay to sanely test webpages in IE - one day we might be able to code to standards and expect Microsoft to get it right... on day.
SCENE ONE - Peter is bitten by radioactive spider and dies from radiation poisoning. SCENE TWO - Mini driver defeats Green Goblin. THE END. Its a Mini Adventure!
It will compete with OE. It will not be competitive. Why? Because OE ships with Windows. Because the "Internet Connection Wizard" that you have to run to even turn on your LAN connection asks "do you want to set up a mail account now?" Because Microsoft is a monopoly, and wants to stay that way.
Replace OE with IE and Lightning with Firefox and... oh wait... Firefox is stealing IE's market share really rather quickly.
The hold Microsoft has over the desktop gives them an advantage, that doesn't mean they'll win the war.
Slashdot Mirror
It took me about two hours to get Debian working properly on my brand-X el-cheapo laptop... counting from when I walked out of the store with it.
> "Where's the rest of Season 1?"
It is not unheard of for a show to get a half-season when its just starting out. It gives the TV companies a chance to test the waters.
Then there are cases like Buffy - which replaced a show mid-season and only got a half season as a result (then it got 6 full seasons and a spin off).
But hey, 20 more episodes ordered. Yippie.
Season 1 spoilers in this comment. Look away now!
So what can we expect in the Slashdot comments for this article?
They don't put it in the subject of the Welcome email they send you...
PBX: Private Branch Exchange (private telephone switchboard)
SIP: Serial Interface Protocol
Hopefully I managed to pick the right output from AcronymFinder. Looks like this is a technology that lets you route telephone calls within an organisation.
That's 800km by 900km (i.e. 800km wide and 900km long). It isn't between 800km and 900km!
Didn't somebody try the same for Farscape?
Kernel.org: Latest Gnome Screenshots
Kernel.org: Latest Michael Jackson Trial news
Kernel.org: Granny Smith's Ten Thousand Cat Photos
It looks like Google Local is still US only ... and they keep ***ing redirecting me to the UK site so I can't even see the link to click it. (I'm not planning a trip to American in the near future - but I might have been).
This looks a lot like 3d desktop, but ontop of the desktop instead of the black background.
Data-heavy web applications weren't in the use cases that started this thread. :)
Slashdot isn't exactly a great example of clean HTML (i.e. this page wouldn't be so big if it was better written in the first place), and I really wouldn't like to try to pass in new posts using JavaScript. Lets look at what you would need to do:
(This is pretty rough and ready)
This would be a lot of processing for the client and there would be rather a lot of jerking around of content. Not to mention the fun of trying to get this to work sanely in a bunch of different browsers.
Oh, and you can't intercept the Refresh request, so you would have to provide a button on the page for it... and users would have to learn the new UI to retrieve new data ... and they would have to learn a different technique for every site that implements it slightly differently.
The user agent is going to have to download it at some stage (if only for the first access), so you'll get significant benefits there.
Lighter HTML is going to be a lot easier to maintain, so you'll save yourself development time.
HTML doesn't demand a great deal from user agents, so you aren't going to be demanding that users find a JavaScript capable webbrowser. The browsers on many portable devices do not support JavaScript, and there are been recomendations that people disable JavaScript in thier browsers for security reasons (mainly due to the problems that keep being found in Internet Explorer's scripting engine).
By using technology that works everywhere, you increase your potential market and therefore also increase potential profits.
In other words: lets reinvent frames using JavaScript.
Frames are not commonly used thanks to severe drawbacks with the concept. Using JS to implement that concept instead of HTML doesn't remove the drawbacks.
Well, that is still way too big for a webpage. With the exception of sites where images are the purpose (or video, etc), 30k is about the maximum you should be using - and why on earth aren't your images being cached?
I value reliability rather more then saving about 2 seconds of reaction time.
If your HTML document containing little more then a list of products is 100 kilobytes, then its very very badly written. You should solve the problem by writing better HTML rather then trying to avoid downloading it.
How many images of each product are you going to have that you can't just include them in a block on the product page? Or in the "Change image" link?
<a href="product-page-with-image-2"
onclick="return changeProductImage('product', 'image-2.jpeg');">Action shot</a>
So (some) Vendors want it, and (some) Web Developers want it becuase the Vendors (their clients) want it - but does it bring any serious benefit to the end user?
Changing product images is a reasonable thing to do - but all that needs is a change in the src of the <img> (Or you can take the thinkgeek approach and have nice, large images that show lots of details and that a full page reload doesn't add any significant bandwidth needs to)
1-minute rotation? How long to people spend on a single page that they aren't reading carefully (and don't want to be distracted)? Just pick a special at random with each new page. Amazon has a "related produts" which works rather well IMO.
I accept your point about the price calculations, for things where the postage et al isn't simple there could be some benefit. However, do people really fiddle the quantities up and down so much that the occasional reload is going to be a noticable detraction of service?
I can't say that I'm really pro-Flash or pro-Iframes (OK, I'm very much against them), but you say "Iframes are never a good idea." without giving any reasons - I can think of quite a few reasons why Iframes are a bad idea - but this JavaScript solution has all of those problems too - but with worse browser support!
I would really love it if it weren't so - but not everybody upgrades to the latest and greatest version of their browser. Some people still use Netscape 4. (And Safari was on the list).
So now people can't bookmark specific products
Useful from a commercial point of view. Really rather distracting from a visitor point of view. If I can't block it, I'm likely to find another vendor.
This sounds practical, but at some stage you need to send the user to a new page anyway, and you can calculate new totals without having to make server calls - so you might as well leave telling the server about it until they go to the next stage of the checkout process.
Ummm... why would you want an RSS new ticker on a webpage in the first place?
Yes, lets just create something with no practical advantages over Flash/Iframe, but which requires a more recent browser to access.
Of course, individual distros could negotiate a different license. (Debian couldn't though, they're guidelines don't allow "special exception for Debain" licenses).
No, mp3 has always been patent encumbered.
I wonder if Real are positioning themselves to get their client distributed with distributions. We might finally see Fedora (et al) with an mp3 player.
I wonder what the license says about redistributing the client? Would Fedora et al be able to distribute it?
In the meantime, I'll stick to Gentoo since they are happy to provide source code for all sorts of mp3 players.
This is why I love my external ethernet/ADSL router and didn't bother getting a USB speedtouch thing.
I wouldn't run Windows at all, but its the price you pay to sanely test webpages in IE - one day we might be able to code to standards and expect Microsoft to get it right ... on day.
SCENE ONE - Peter is bitten by radioactive spider and dies from radiation poisoning.
SCENE TWO - Mini driver defeats Green Goblin.
THE END. Its a Mini Adventure!
Replace OE with IE and Lightning with Firefox and ... oh wait ... Firefox is stealing IE's market share really rather quickly.
The hold Microsoft has over the desktop gives them an advantage, that doesn't mean they'll win the war.