Active Client Pages: Chrys`s Approach - Advantages of Active Client Pages
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Any information stored at the server and its analysis can be presented fast to the user using ACP, independent of whether the Internet connection is fast or slow. Only the first page may take some time to be downloaded through a slow Internet connection.
Web pages are becoming voluminous because authors are putting a lot of script into them. This leads to long download times. With ACP, the download will no longer be slow.
If you understand your scripting language very well, you will pay less for hosting, since the analysis will now be done by your script at the client, and not by some program at the server.
ACP frees the server from work, thus increasing the overall speed of the World Wide Web. At the limit, if every client uses ACP, a client will not have to wait too long for the server to serve other clients before it is served, since the processing will be done at the client and not at the server; in other words, the server spends less time serving a client. One of the aims of N-Tier systems is to free the server from work. ACP also serves that purpose.
I have given you these advantages, as seen by me.
The Secret of Active Client Pages
The secret of Active Client Pages lies in the fact that after the first page has been downloaded by the browser, other pages or data are downloaded in advance in the background, without the user knowing, and stored in an HTML master page (or frameset). This master page (or frameset) is the first page downloaded. By the time the user would have finished reading or otherwise dealing with the first page, the information for the next few pages would have arrived at the browser. When the user needs the next page, the browser displays it from the store (master page).
My Approach
My approach is a combination of the Script and the Ajax Approaches plus enhancements I've added. I also made enhancements to the Script and Ajax Approaches. The enhancements I made with my approach (over the Script and Ajax Approaches) are that I've make the Back and Forward buttons of the browser able to work, and I show the author how to change the content of the pages that are behind or ahead of the present page.
With my approach, you can use the Back and Forward buttons to go to the different pages. With my approach, the user can see one page and then have content in any of the other pages changed consciously or unconsciously.
With my approach, data can also be downloaded in advance, maintained in a document (page) and used to produce the next page.
There are two phases to my approach. I call the first phase the Document Phase. In this phase, a user session consists of a series of HTML documents. Each of these documents is a page. It is the existence of these documents that makes the browser enable its back and forward buttons.
I call the second phase the Window Phase. In this phase, a user session consists of a series of browser windows. Each of these windows can have a series of HTML documents. All of the features of the first phase can be in a window (of the second phase). A user session for the second phase is expected to be longer than the user session for the first phase.
As we go on in the series from now, know that we shall be dealing with the document phase. When we come to the window phase I will inform you. In either phase, JavaScript can do calculations, for example, financial calculations.
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