Re: How Can I Help Make PM Faster?

[cbrandtbuffalo]

I think the comments regarding the hardware are a bit dated since right now the current hardware is itself a bit dated. There are efforts under way right now to migrate to new hardware and we should see a performance jump then.

Another thought has been to add some javascripty functionality similar to slashdot and use.perl.org to cut down on the full page loads the server has to do for comments, etc. See also this thread: Re: Could PerlMonks use some cash?

[creamygoodness]

I've wondered for a long time why voting uses a full page reload rather than Ajax.

[moritz]

Not everybody has javascript enabled, for various reasons:
• Security
• Performance - some scripts can be painfully slow
• Browser doesn't support it (think of text browsers, speech output or whatever, or some mobile phones don't offer it)
• Dislike of anything changing that should be static
• Too much bad experience with javascript

So if there were an Ajax thingy of that, it would surely be not compulsive.

[Lawliet]

I've wondered that for a couple months too. I figured they wanted to keep this written solely in Perl.

[jdporter]

I figured they wanted to keep this written solely in Perl.

Not to keep it in Perl, specifically, but to keep it entirely on the server. There is a reluctance to make any feature of the site depend on Javascript, or any other browser-side technology (other than HTML and CSS). There is also a concern about Javascript specifically, and that is its potential for cross-site scripting attacks and other hackage. See thread Let users link in a javascript library for one representative discussion of the issues.

[creamygoodness]

The full page reload upon casting a vote is inferior as a user interface to the Ajax-driven dynamic HTML you see everywhere these days (YouTube, Amazon, etc). It's tedious to click, scroll, click then reorient myself after a reload. Especially when reloads are slow because the site is slow.

It also seems likely that voting-triggered full reloads contribute to the site's overall sluggishness.