Web Development

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Minimize network traffic with XMLHTTP

0 helpful
9 replies

by maryweilage

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
Tell us what you think about minimizing network traffic with XMLHTTP, as featured in this week's Web Development Zone newsletter.

9 replies

by jpnoon

This blazing fast response mechanism (i.e. change the data without reloading the html) is built into MS Access Data Access Pages, asp.net and the new ColdFusionMX/FlashMX active webpage configurations.

by fywdude

Yes, IE has some nice functionality to reduce network traffic. Taking advantage of this functionality takes double the effort (the real measurement of code cost, not lines), encourages bad coding practices (such as including database calls in an ASPpage), and will have to be completely re-written if the application is expanded to users outside the intranet (often the case with data-driven systems).

Until bandwidth costs more than development (again), the use of templates will result in reusable view components that won't marry the IT department forever to a single browser.

by asyn42

That looks like a pretty cool solution the the problem. But we have to be cross-platform, so ActiveX is not an option.

Is there a similar non-ActiveX solution that works with Mozilla based browsers? Possibly a similar idea using Java as the component to support I/O to the server?

by jelks

Back to the old "coding to the browser" of Netscape days, huh? I thought we were trying to get beyond such sillyness. "Plus ca change ...", I guess.

While some folks are indeed interested in IE-only intranet solutions, how about something for the *World Wide* Web...

How about an XML solution that does NOT require MS-specific Active-X? And how about one that doesn't use IE's (only) "XML data islands"? Ignoring for that moment that [x]HTML doesn't have an element in any existing published DTD, those things are even invalid XML: you can NOT begin an element with the letters [xX][mM][lL]!

by drkervorkian

I think the thing that most people fail to realize is that M$ provides tools that make the development process easier and faster. Yeah, M$ happens to be a monopoly and nothing short of pure evil, but it just so happens that knowing their tools and being able to utilize them, at least for me, pays quite well. I think all this high-level scripting is pointless and slow. The only way to get true speed is to work at a very low level. Who has that kind of time?!!? I bet if I spent the 3 months to develop a true speedy solution, I'd get paid the same amount as if I spent a week developing the same solution with M$ tools. Also considering that IE constitutes about 98% of all browsers used, then using M$ solutions is not such a bad deal. This is especially true when you are developing INTRANET applications where 100%, yes 100%, of the browsers are IE 5.5 or above. This is why it takes me a short time to develop intranet solutions with IE, rather than spending much more time trying to work around all the short-comings of all the other browsers. M$ might be the epitome of all things bad and evil, but they just happen to provide an easy way to do things.

by mike arms

Wonderful, another suggestion to implement via a M$ proprietary extension. Those who ignore web standards and choose such a course deserve whatever vendor abuse they get.

Avoid this like the plague.

by journeyman2001

You can reduce network traffic by utilising JavaScript (found in all major browsers). By using .js file(s), which would reside in the users cache during their session, you can use JavaScript to display a template of your HTML page. What will be retrieved from your ASP/PHP/JSP code will be JavaScript instructions on which routines to use to create the template (though this possibly could be kept in the .js file as well) and JavaScript lines of code to set each control on your HTML page to the values retrieved.

Having already used this in an ASP project, I can verify that the speed it takes to return from a submit is three times faster than an ASP page that contained all the code itself. All by reducing the amount of redundant HTML being passed. And the added beauty is that it's not browser specific.

This discussion is closed to new replies.