[Ovirt-devel] [R&D] Breaking the Browser

[Jason Guiditta]

On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 16:12 -0700, Jeff Schroeder wrote:

> Cool, but... why? Why isn't having an error message and a graceful fallback
> not good enough? You are describing a thick client not a web client. This seems
> like something where 99% of the people would be ok with an error message and
> ajax page updates that take them back to a dashboard. In saying ajax I'm meaning
> dhtml that takes you back to the mainpage with no page refresh more
> than anything
> else.
> 
This is the kind of feedback we were looking for.  The idea was that
people would want 'real-time' updates (which may still be valid for
graphs), but if periodic updates and notification if a user tries to go
to something unavailable will suffice, then that is fine (and easier).
> This seems like a lot of extra work for a cool feature which wouldn't
> be missed if it was
> never implemented. Maybe you could implement a compromise with a
> javascript timer
> and a small data stream? Yes that is pull and not push based, but it would be:
> - Easier to implement
> - More compatible with existing mechanisms
> - Not overly complex
We are already doing this with the left nav tree.  If we stick with
doing periodic updates, we will probably make the refresh time
configurable somewhere.
> 
> Do you anticipate 10k different users connection to the wui at the same time?
Possibly, yes.  Any user who is given permission to something managed by
ovirt would be using the webapp, so in a big company, this could be a
_lot_ of people.
> 

> My opinion would be the best solution is to not implement this feature until it
> is supported via html5 in mainstream browsers.
I don't disagree so long as we can meet the needs of our users without
it in the interim, and just make it better once html 5 is supported.

> For what it isn't really worth, strong NACK. Really good and forward
> looking idea,
> but not technically feasible in a clean standards compliant fashion.
> 
> It still is over my head why a pretty error message (something like litebox) and
> a page refresh to the dashboard doesn't work. Time could be spent in
> other places.
> Building a thick-client in a web browser is one of the things that
> killed the hula project.
> The bongo project (hula fork after novell dumped it) is still plagued
> by the rich web client
> code-named "dragonfly". Whenever they edit it, things break. Ambition
> is good, too much
> is really bad, just my 2 cents.
> 

Great feedback, thanks!

-j