Thanks for your feedback. Could you elaborate a little? I'm not being snarky -- I came up with them based on similar things I'd seen online and I'm not great at visual communication, so if you've improvement suggestions, I'd genuinely like to hear them.
They would be a lot clearer if they showed how the messages actually look, with some example data.
For example the HTTP one could have `{ timeout: 60000 }` in its requests and stuff like `{ events: [{ type: "something_changed" }] }` in the responses.
And the WS messages could look something like `{ action: "send_message", content: "hi" }` and `{ event: "new_message", content: "hi" }`.
I'm the author of this article and would appreciate any feedback/thoughts. I included just a few examples on the graphic (mostly from memory as I was lucky enough to come of age in 1990 so lived through it).
I remember when Yahoo mail came along with AJAX and how astonishing it was to not have to refresh to get new mail. Although, over a dial up connection, I'm not sure how "realtime" anything was :)
So, there's an intermediate phase missing before AJAX. From roughly 1996 until the nascent stages of the AJAX era we used the Refresh attribute. This could be a <meta> tag in the header of the HTML content or you could send it as an HTTP header. While some sites refreshed the entire page this way, it was more useful for content served in frames/iframes (like headlines or sport scores or…urgh…advertising).
More pointedly, the Australian Open site (then ausopen.org, now apparently ausopen.com) used the Refresh: header to serve dynamic-ish scoring data and headlines circa 1997-1999 (I worked on the periphery of it through the 1999 open).
Using Reddit as an example of a good user interface is going to turn some people off. Arguably Reddit is an example of everything that goes wrong here. The interface is less informative and usable than it used to be so that it can get in people's faces with irrelevant updates and endless ads. And on top of that it tends to be slow and prone to going dead. Perhaps real time applications may in time through experience lead to real quiet and real politely well behaved applications?
Thanks for your feedback! I'm not sure I said it's a good user interface (I'm not a visual person so wouldn't have the confidence) but I do think it's a good example of a set of features that show a community interacting in realtime. Maybe I didn't make that clear in the article so I'll bear in mind for future writing. TY!
Not accidentally omitted; we didn't share them because they're not that meaningful without full context of how Ably works internally. The data was useful to the Ably team as they made a decision about whether Graviton would be suitable. It may be possible to share the information anyway if you're interested. I'll find out...
Was it just me that misread the title initially? Though I think I'd probably be equally good at recognizing human faeces as I've worked my way through a bunch of pets and kids and consider poop my specialist subject.
The point about fracking stands though, right? Isn't the argument that we may have to cause some environmental damage in the name of plentiful, cheap energy? Then that energy gets harvested and, guess what, it isn't plentiful or cheap either.
Fracking is a complicated problem: there’s both the mechanical effect and the chemials added there; there’s the dynamic between dependancies on foreign dictators and local harm… A lot of what has been done falls within the tamer side of oil company playbook (seed disent at local assembly in Texas, rather than fund a genocide on Nigeria) but it’s still plenty reprehensible.
One aspect of fracking that I want to know more about is geothermal: no need for chemicals, renewable, under-explored for now. It could be worst because it’s usually deeper, or it could help a lot. Experts mention there has been progress on earthquakes…
Then again, saying that means oil companies will frack for natural gas, claim it’s for geothermal research and leave the whell untapped when the price goes down.
This was a great blog post from some reddit engineers a few months ago https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/pfgz4r/reddits_n... which talks about how they added a realtime feature, how they did it and how long it took. There was a big fail the first time they rolled it out too...this stuff isn't easy.
Of course, reddit is a huge company and has loads of established engineers. YMMV.
