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in reply to Re: web-based application or desktop application?
in thread web-based application or desktop application?

Related to iframes what I would like is something like <icontent> where you could do something like this:
<p>You currently have <icontent src="http://me.com/basket_count.pl" /> items in your basket. <!-- server determines who user is through cookies -->
As i understand it this is tricky in iframes as you need to set the height etc which are prone to change.

This would allow you to create, for example, static product pages on a web-shop and only hit the cgi for the dynamic content such as the number of items in a basket.

--tidiness is the memory loss of environmental mnemonics

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Re: web-based application or desktop application?
by b10m (Vicar) on Dec 05, 2003 at 11:14 UTC
    Why would you want that, and what do you want to accomplish with that? This can already be achieved by a simple Perl CGI script, PHP, or -oh, let's throw this back in- Server Side Includes, if I understand your point (what I probably don't do)...
    --
    B10m
      If you take a typical web-shop page, such as say http://thinkgeek.com the whole page is standard issue - the same for every customer. All, that is, for the little bit in the top right which says "Loot: Your cart is empty.".

      It would be great to save the whole page statically to the server and then only have to generate that tiny little bit from the CGI. This would allow some really heavy processing to be applied to each page, such as category generation and related products, safe in the knowledge that it need only be done when te database changes, not for each request.

      It also would allow the page to be cached by proxies and would allow you to slurp small amounts of data from other sites - stuff that is currently done using images - such as hit counters.

      Just because you have not felt the need for it does not mean that it is not desirable...

      UPDATE: This could be made into a mod_perl filter is suppose - that is a thought...

      --tidiness is the memory loss of environmental mnemonics

        I think you want to check out SSI then:
        The decision of when to use SSI, and when to have your page entirely generated by some program, is usually a matter of how much of the page is static, and how much needs to be recalculated every time the page is served. SSI is a great way to add small pieces of information, such as the current time. But if a majority of your page is being generated at the time that it is served, you need to look for some other solution.
        Or even some JavaScript might do *shrug*
        "Just because you have not felt the need for it does not mean that it is not desirable..."
        Oh most certainly not :) If the case was wheter I felt a need for something to allow something's existence, the world'd be pretty boring :)

        --
        B10m

        It's called Mason :) Ciao, Valerio

Re: web-based application or desktop application?
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Dec 05, 2003 at 11:45 UTC
    There's no reason that you can't use <IMG> for that, except that hardly any browser can deal with <IMG> getting back text. Or better yet, the proposed <OBJECT> element, but, Netscape being the dominant browser at that time, suffered from NIH syndrome, so it was never broadly used.

    Oh well, the web could have been great. Instead, we got Netscape to ruin it.

    Abigail