Long poll jsonp

UPDATE: Implemented changes to the code as suggested by Akeru, thanks!
UPDATE2: Updated to the newer version of jQuery-jsonp, thanks Julian, the Ugly spinner loading is now gone!

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So, whatever happened to comet? Wasn’t it supposed to save the masses from wasteful ajax polling? I certainly appreciate Alex Russel’s work on the matter, but it really seems as though this very useful technology is falling to the wayside. I think this is mainly due to the difficulty and requirements of a successful implementation on the most popular web server, the main problem is Apache’s use of threading, this post explains the problem eloquently. Of course Apache have a whole project that deals with this issue to a degree, but I don’t think that it is easy to implement, once you dig a little into the documentation, you quickly see that this is not really a thing that just works out of the box… You need to read a book on the subject first. That is a bit of a deal-breaker for me; after all, the technique is not that difficult to understand, so why should you need to read a whole book to implement it? Read more

CSS Formatter

So I created a CSS parser and formatter on the weekend; I think it’s kinda neat as it formats CSS “just the way I like it”.
Why would I do this, when there are so many CSS formatters available? Well, the aim of most formatters is to “optimise” the CSS
(ie: make it as small as possible), whereas the aim of my formatter is to make it as readable as possible. Read more

WSG meeting was fun!

Had a ton of fun presenting, and met some interesting people. Even some that want to help out with PAX which would be great!

Thanks very much to Russ for organising the night!!!

The future of Mozilla

I attended the free Mozilla booze-up Labs event the other month; it was quite interesting; Ben Galbraith spoke about what Mozilla is up to, and what they are planning in the near future… It was interesting because I got the feeling that whilst they have a few interesting projects in the pipeline, they don’t really have anywhere specific to take their browser engine; it has gotten to a point where it performs on par with all the other browsers, and all the other browsers perform on par with it.
So where should Mozilla go from here? I think it is blindingly obvious what they could do, though I don’t think they’re gonna like my suggestion… Before I mention what it is, lets take a closer look at Mozilla. Read more

WSG Nov 11th

I’m speaking at the WSG about my PAXJS framework next month! You can register at the WSG website! I always enjoy the WSG meetings, there is a great mix of people from different areas and backgrounds, and much discussion anout web development in general. Note that the cost is $10 to attend.

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