Annoying Firefox problems when surfing sgforums

last SG · 2008-01-04T22:22:30+00:00

Oh... and the posting shortcuts don't work. Like Alt + W for the URL tag... Funny enough... version 1.5 works.

LatecomerX SG

I have just spent about 30 minutes looking up on it. It definitely looks promising, but it will only make an impact similar to Flash during the pre-DHTML era, in my opinion.

Indeed, it's easier on the web developers as they don't have to pick up another few more languages to code a desktop application, and Adobe solves the OS platform compatiblity issues for them as well. But the barrier of having to download and to install the application for the users remains. The HTML and JS code may not be rendered in the exact same way as on web browsers unless it's WebKit-based such as Safari. So it's just as good as pushing everyone to use Safari to surf the web. And even if this AIR thing gets popular, Microshyt is simply going to come out with a clone and replaces the technologies within with its own proprietary ones (say, instead of WebKit, they use their own IE rendering engine), just like Flash and Silverlight. So at the end of the day, the web developers are simply getting more headaches with all these new, emerging technologies.

To add on, due to the difference how security issues are handled by web browsers and AIR, a moderate to large-scale web application will probably not be able to fit into both platforms without major editing required to adapt to one of them.

Furthermore, if a programmer only needs to create a cross-platform desktop application, that dear old coffee-flavoured Java will always be there.

ndmmxiaomayi SG

My only concern is lag. Seriously, take a look around Ajax websites like Yahoo! Mail, Live Hotmail. Ajax lags badly on a computer with just 256MB of RAM. And to top it off, it's a barebones system with no extra programs, tweaked to improve performance.

If Ajax websites can lag so badly on such a system, desktop applications will kill it.

I've trialed one website which uses Adobe Air. Webbie loads fast, but in less than half hour of usage, it caused browsers to start leaking memory and caused huge lags. The only way is to kill it and restart the computer.

What Adobe needs - an efficient coding team. Notice that all products of Adobe lags very badly.

Shotgun SG

Fair enough. Thats the penalty for having XML providing instantaneous updates to a low end system. Then again, 256MB Ram machines aren't gonna be around much longer are they?

I use a wide line of Adobe Products. Stuff like Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro, Illustrator... Only photoshop and illustrator gives me problems with "lag" once in a while. But I figured that was due to my 915 chipset than anything else.

IMO, Ajax sites face the same performance penalties as web services using WSDL. It takes time for an xml, to trave back and form, recompiled etc. That one can't be helped until they somehow find a better way to compile XML. I mean you look at an xml document, you'll see more header/tags than data. There's inefficiency in the way it works already.

If they improve the xml efficiency issue, I think Ajax, and Air apps should become a lil more responsive as well. Maybe instead of sending one huge xml chunk, they should break up their applications to chew on smaller chunks.

LatecomerX SG

Actually XML is not the only thing AJAX can send and receive during requests, despite the fact that the "X" in AJAX refers to XML. Text and comma-separated values are some of the alternatives used to reduce bandwidth usage in AJAX requests. Of course, if the main usage of AJAX is to insert/replace existing HTML elements on the page or delivering random chunks of data, it's still the best to use XML. I mean, XML data such as:

makes much more sense then

don't they? In short, XML takes the work of raw data processing off the client and protects the integrity of the data to some extent (for example, if there is a missing closing tag, the client can tell that the data is not complete).

Compressing XML data is a good idea, but this also means that it would be have to be decompressed on the client-side, which translates to higher CPU time cost and hence lag on lower-end systems, especially if many AJAX requests are sent and received in a short time.

There's another technology emerging that may become a good competitor against AJAX in time to come - the use of long polling. You may want to read it up on it through the links below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming)
http://meteorserver.org/interaction-modes/

ndmmxiaomayi SG

Event driven… something like ASP?

LatecomerX SG

I'm not sure how ASP is event-driven since I don't code in ASP. In the case of Comet, the connection initiated by the client remains open until there is a data transfer triggered by a modification of data on the server, so in a way it is event-driven.

Shotgun SG

You see, that exactly the problem with XML. Inefficiency.

Look at the amount of overheads compared to the data. There is no way you can call XML efficient.

If I had my way, I'd have every machine running java, and have XML pass value beans. That way, I make sure my transmission is efficient.

I've yet to look into Comet or try it. I doubt I'd get the chance to since I'm moving out of this industry. =)

One thing I've noticed ever since XML and Web Service. When a transmission is "read friendly" for humans, like how XML and its Schemas are, its seldom efficient. I'm a strongly advocate letting machines read XML and improve its transmission efficiency to reduce the amount of de-compiling and recompiling as possible. No human should need to be able to read XML. If its needs to be readable, build a separate application to do so. There is no point receiving performance penalties of being "human friendly" when hardly anyone looks at what goes between web service applications, or what is being updated in an AJAX standard page.

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