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

[Jeff Schroeder]

On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Jason Guiditta <jguiditt at redhat.com> wrote:
> 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).

Q: How do you get realtime graphs with a webapp?
A: SVG + AJAX

A good example of how to do this would be the m0n0wall firewall.
Here is a screenshot of their interface graphs:
http://m0n0.ch/wall/images/screens/status_graph.png

The svg graphs are drawn by the javascript. It gets the data from a
xmlhttprequest
feed directly from the server. It is really sexy technology and most browsers
support it. Is asking IE users to install the Adobe SVG plugin or user Firefox
too much?

Take a look at how easy this is to do:
http://www.browserland.org/scripts/svgclock/

If you compress that svg down, the whole thing is 4k. I don't even think flash
could do something that smooth and clean looking in 4k. Were you aware of this?

-- 
Jeff Schroeder

Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
http://www.digitalprognosis.com