I usually consider that 10% of the users have javascript partially or fully disabled either because they use javascript-less browsers (rare) or because of security issues (corporate environments). The trick there is to develop your web application with the Progressive Enhancements philosophy in mind: build a layered, Javascript/AJAX is merely a client-side behavioural layer added on top of the content layer (pure HTML) and the style layer (CSS), it relies on both but shouldn't be necessary for the application itself to work. It's merely applying the good ol' layers separation on your client-side web pages.
Following the Progressive Enhancements "way" raises the chances that your websites will degrade fairly gracefully when the upper layers are not available (old browser, quirks,...) without "shutting down" the whole site for the user (or lower the cost/pain of having them degrade gracefully).
I mean, the first articles explaining how to create cross-browsers XMLHTTP requests ain't have more than a pair of years anyway...
Wouldn't it be slightly more interresting if Slashdot promoted useful stuff such as the Dojo or Mochikit Javascript libraries/toolkits (others exist btw, those are just fairly stable and advanced), which actually:
Make that kind of stuff easier
Make that kind of stuff more reliable
Give great tools/shortcuts for working with javascript
Not blazingly faster, but faster nonetheless. And who's really going to notice? Graphic designers and CAD people maybe, but the casual user isn't really going to notice the pickup in speed. So perhaps it's a bit of exaggeration but in the end it isn't hurting anyone.
I think that in the Ars test the tester said the interface on the Core Duo had much more of teh snappy, so the end user would notice that.
I'll just speak about what happened in france (cause that's where I am).
In 1998-1999, there was basically 1 historical ISP (France Telecom / Wanadoo), the charges were at best around 60 for 512/128, you could get cheaper, but it was slower.
Then, the market got deregulated when FT was privatized (it was a fully public company). Telcos and ISPs started coming in. One of them was Free Telecom.
Free Telecom started on the regular lines (not DSL) with a pay for access and a fixed 50h/mo, but they were CHEAP. As in half the price of everyone else. Then they landed on the DSL zone.
In 2000, they got you 512/128 for 30/mo. The customer service sucked because they got extremely popular among students and youngs (being cheap and fast). They soon upgraded their service to 1024/256, not changing the prices.
Then came the "ungrouping" thing (dunno how to say it in english, basically your ISP gets his line up to the DSLAM for partial, and from DSLAM to your house for full), and they rose their offer again, to 2Mb/512 (with stable prices), then 3Mb for fully ungrouped, and kept at it.
The other ISPs had to follow, because they couldn't get a share of the pie if they didn't, even FT had to higher drastically their offers and lower their charges.
That's why you can, now, in france, get up to 24mb/1mb plus TV plus unlimited phones (to landlines) for 30/mo if you're in big towns (fully ungrouped networks) and up to 10mb/1mb (plus TV and phones) if you're not fully ungrouped.
Or 20mb/1mb DSL for around 15/mo (no phone/tv) from some other ISPs.
Basically, we got lucky enough to get some sane competition that got the prices way down and the traffic way up.
I'm currently paying $42/month for 1.5/256 DSL + $30 for local services (with all the bells & whistles since getting only caller ID would save me a whole whopping $2). Going with Speakeasy's lowest plan gives me 1.5/384 for $60 (after taxes), and I'm just going to take the remaining $10 and increase my cell phone plan to about 25 hours of time per month which is more than I'll ever use.
Whoa, those were the service we had in 2001 in france, or something...
Some people don't have the choice though, belgian ISPs for example only provide capped access with limited bandwidth (top your bandwidth and you get back to ISDN speed = 64k).
You can buy additional bandwidth pack though, but they're not free.
I talk to people on IRC all the time and those bastards have DSL connections like you wouldn't believe, or 10/20 Mbit net connections.
With TV and unlimited phone on top (no, i'm not kidding you).
To be fair, even in europe countries are not equal. France is pretty well off (the big towns at least), but connections in Belgium cost more while having monthly bandwidth quotas and stuff (and both countries are next to each other).
As a long time non-american MMORPG player (I played from '99 to 2004), I'll tell you how I see it: first, localization usually sucks. Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country, at least on english-speaking servers you don't meet them, and since you're not playing during the top hours of the server you don't get hit by the TardTrains of the english speaking servers. Third, when you're playing on a US server as a european or asian, you're basically playing in the low-load hours of the server, while you'd be playing at rush hour on your own server, and it's much simpler and less stressing to play with a slightly lower population.
Other factors may include overseas/net friends (meet someone on the web, they introduce you to a game, you'll want to play it with them, even if you're chinese and the guy is canadian), desire to better your knowledge of foreign languages (spending 3+ hours every day typing mostly english can help there),...
Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist.
I don't know which one you're talking about, but the latest MS Natural Keyboard (Ergonomic 4000) has a very nice feature: it saves the state of that fscking F-Lock button somewhere inside the keyboard itself, which means that not only does it save the state of the F-Lock when you reboot or shutdown your computer (which is good), but you can even switch your keyboard from one computer to another and it will keep the same F-Lock setting.
This is VERY cool. Basically, you turn the F-Lock on (so that you can actually use the F keys) then rip the F-Lock key off the keyboard, and voila, you're done, sane keyboard again.
Re:Web 2.0: Where solutions don't need problems?
on
Web 3.0
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· Score: 1
First, where did you get your development cycle and why would you not implement XMLHTTP to begin with (the first development phase)?
Because it'd be stupid, the main point is to built incremetally on a stable base. XMLHTTP is NOT a stable base, it's not a base at all and it has 0 stability. I find that most people participating in the Web 2.0 wankfest really should read this essay on progressive enhancements, because that's the way to build web apps that actually work well and reliably: incremetally. When you build a house, you start with the foundations, then the walls then the top, then you add the windows and doors, then you start painting and stuff. Just do the same for your websites, instead of picking the doorbell chime first and trying to fit the foundation under the bird's cage
I think you should RTFA for once, Zeldman is quite far from a marketting think tank, and most of what perspires of his article is borderline hatred for hype, "web 2.0" and that kind of stuff.
kind of depends of the place where you land, Mercury's surface temperature vary between 90K (-183C) and 700K (+426C). Venus' surface is much hotter (surface temperature never drops under 700K), but has much less variations.
They have, check Deep Space 1. NASA's Dawn Mission will also use ion thrusters, and over 100 soviet satellites have used ion thrusters in the past 30 years.
Well, Ion thrusters were first worked on during the 60s by the USA and the Soviet Unions, so they're old news anyway, the point here was improving a specific type of ion thruster.
While the extension itself may be useful, it's ugly as a sin, the icons are criminal and the one in the status bar is horribly distorded under a 1280*1024 resolution, making it butt-ugly and hard to read.
Seriously, I'm afraid that I can't keep something THAT ugly in my browser, it's just too much.
You don't need a better code to prevent spyware, you need better users. Better system design/code will never beat out a user, unless the design is involves cutting the power to the computer.
So damn true. As Rich Cook once said:
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like desktop-UI emulation in web pages, which is not the goal of Dojo, Mochikit or Prototype.
Interresting nonetheless, so it's been bookmarked anyway.
I usually consider that 10% of the users have javascript partially or fully disabled either because they use javascript-less browsers (rare) or because of security issues (corporate environments). The trick there is to develop your web application with the Progressive Enhancements philosophy in mind: build a layered, Javascript/AJAX is merely a client-side behavioural layer added on top of the content layer (pure HTML) and the style layer (CSS), it relies on both but shouldn't be necessary for the application itself to work. It's merely applying the good ol' layers separation on your client-side web pages.
Following the Progressive Enhancements "way" raises the chances that your websites will degrade fairly gracefully when the upper layers are not available (old browser, quirks, ...) without "shutting down" the whole site for the user (or lower the cost/pain of having them degrade gracefully).
I mean, the first articles explaining how to create cross-browsers XMLHTTP requests ain't have more than a pair of years anyway...
Wouldn't it be slightly more interresting if Slashdot promoted useful stuff such as the Dojo or Mochikit Javascript libraries/toolkits (others exist btw, those are just fairly stable and advanced), which actually:
Just wondering...
I think that in the Ars test the tester said the interface on the Core Duo had much more of teh snappy, so the end user would notice that.
"Best of breeds" are 15/mo for 20mb/1mb, or 30/mo for 24mb/1mb with TV and unlimited phone included.
Connections are, of course, unlimited (no bandwidth quotas)
I'll just speak about what happened in france (cause that's where I am).
In 1998-1999, there was basically 1 historical ISP (France Telecom / Wanadoo), the charges were at best around 60 for 512/128, you could get cheaper, but it was slower.
Then, the market got deregulated when FT was privatized (it was a fully public company). Telcos and ISPs started coming in. One of them was Free Telecom.
Free Telecom started on the regular lines (not DSL) with a pay for access and a fixed 50h/mo, but they were CHEAP. As in half the price of everyone else. Then they landed on the DSL zone.
In 2000, they got you 512/128 for 30/mo. The customer service sucked because they got extremely popular among students and youngs (being cheap and fast). They soon upgraded their service to 1024/256, not changing the prices.
Then came the "ungrouping" thing (dunno how to say it in english, basically your ISP gets his line up to the DSLAM for partial, and from DSLAM to your house for full), and they rose their offer again, to 2Mb/512 (with stable prices), then 3Mb for fully ungrouped, and kept at it.
The other ISPs had to follow, because they couldn't get a share of the pie if they didn't, even FT had to higher drastically their offers and lower their charges.
That's why you can, now, in france, get up to 24mb/1mb plus TV plus unlimited phones (to landlines) for 30/mo if you're in big towns (fully ungrouped networks) and up to 10mb/1mb (plus TV and phones) if you're not fully ungrouped.
Or 20mb/1mb DSL for around 15/mo (no phone/tv) from some other ISPs.
Basically, we got lucky enough to get some sane competition that got the prices way down and the traffic way up.
That's not much for "way less", some people in europe get 24mb/1mb no quotas for 30/mo, TV and unlimited phone included.
Whoa, those were the service we had in 2001 in france, or something...
Holy fucking crap...
Some people don't have the choice though, belgian ISPs for example only provide capped access with limited bandwidth (top your bandwidth and you get back to ISDN speed = 64k).
You can buy additional bandwidth pack though, but they're not free.
You don't really believe that do you? Or don't you know Bell South at all?
With TV and unlimited phone on top (no, i'm not kidding you).
To be fair, even in europe countries are not equal. France is pretty well off (the big towns at least), but connections in Belgium cost more while having monthly bandwidth quotas and stuff (and both countries are next to each other).
Allow me to show you how to handle that kind of annoyances:
WoW has an ignore list feature doesn't it?
As a long time non-american MMORPG player (I played from '99 to 2004), I'll tell you how I see it: first, localization usually sucks. Second, you don't necessarily want to meet the retarded 14 yo from your own country, at least on english-speaking servers you don't meet them, and since you're not playing during the top hours of the server you don't get hit by the TardTrains of the english speaking servers. Third, when you're playing on a US server as a european or asian, you're basically playing in the low-load hours of the server, while you'd be playing at rush hour on your own server, and it's much simpler and less stressing to play with a slightly lower population.
Other factors may include overseas/net friends (meet someone on the web, they introduce you to a game, you'll want to play it with them, even if you're chinese and the guy is canadian), desire to better your knowledge of foreign languages (spending 3+ hours every day typing mostly english can help there), ...
Considering that someone not playing on a localized server is a gold farmer is stupid and sad, it's akin to considering everyone from out of your country a proven terrorist.
I don't know which one you're talking about, but the latest MS Natural Keyboard (Ergonomic 4000) has a very nice feature: it saves the state of that fscking F-Lock button somewhere inside the keyboard itself, which means that not only does it save the state of the F-Lock when you reboot or shutdown your computer (which is good), but you can even switch your keyboard from one computer to another and it will keep the same F-Lock setting.
This is VERY cool. Basically, you turn the F-Lock on (so that you can actually use the F keys) then rip the F-Lock key off the keyboard, and voila, you're done, sane keyboard again.
Because it'd be stupid, the main point is to built incremetally on a stable base. XMLHTTP is NOT a stable base, it's not a base at all and it has 0 stability. I find that most people participating in the Web 2.0 wankfest really should read this essay on progressive enhancements, because that's the way to build web apps that actually work well and reliably: incremetally. When you build a house, you start with the foundations, then the walls then the top, then you add the windows and doors, then you start painting and stuff. Just do the same for your websites, instead of picking the doorbell chime first and trying to fit the foundation under the bird's cage
I think you should RTFA for once, Zeldman is quite far from a marketting think tank, and most of what perspires of his article is borderline hatred for hype, "web 2.0" and that kind of stuff.
Third time's the charm, ready for tomorrow's "Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye"?
Well, Ruby 2 may actually be faster than a dead snail, that may be the point
Which is a shame, because the manga itself is much much better.
It's around 0.454kg (0.45359237kg precisely)
kind of depends of the place where you land, Mercury's surface temperature vary between 90K (-183C) and 700K (+426C). Venus' surface is much hotter (surface temperature never drops under 700K), but has much less variations.
They have, check Deep Space 1. NASA's Dawn Mission will also use ion thrusters, and over 100 soviet satellites have used ion thrusters in the past 30 years.
Well, Ion thrusters were first worked on during the 60s by the USA and the Soviet Unions, so they're old news anyway, the point here was improving a specific type of ion thruster.
While the extension itself may be useful, it's ugly as a sin, the icons are criminal and the one in the status bar is horribly distorded under a 1280*1024 resolution, making it butt-ugly and hard to read.
Seriously, I'm afraid that I can't keep something THAT ugly in my browser, it's just too much.
So damn true. As Rich Cook once said: