Active Client Pages: the Script Approach
(Page 1 of 4 )
Would you like to minimize the amount of time your users spend waiting for your web site to download? Now you can. Thanks to Active Client Pages, you can speed up at least some of the processing involved in downloading and displaying your web site. This three-part series explains the script approach to building Active Client Pages.
Introduction
If a user connected to the Internet on a slow line, he would find that it takes time for his web page to be displayed (downloaded) at his client computer. The time is spent only when only the first page of his web site is downloaded; the rest of the pages would come very fast.
If you have a web site with an image gallery, and your users are coming to you via a slow Internet connection, the pictures will take a long time to download. But you can set things up so that only the first image (or first set of images), or even no image at all of your web site, will take long to download; the rest (or all) of your images will come very fast.
If you are working from a database at a server (on web development) and your server is too busy, or many people are using your server, there is good news for you today: you can have the database programming activity, which is supposed to be at the server, done at the client’s computer. Many professional web sites use server-side applications like PHP, ASP, JSP and so forth to generate their pages. If you are good at JavaScript and do not want to pay more for hosting because of active server page technology, the time has come for you to pay less.
Web pages are becoming voluminous because authors like to make them active; because of this, the pages take time to download. There is good news: you can now have your web page downloaded in bits.
All of this is thanks to Active Client Technology, discovered by Vlad Podvorny in the years 2002-2003 and Chuck Bradley in the year 2006, and enhanced by me, Chrys in 2007. Both Vlad and Chuck independently gave the name Active Client Pages (ACP) to the discovery. They discovered it separately.
You need good knowledge of JavaScript and HTML to understand this three-part series.
How I became interested in Active Client Pages
I am a freelance computer programmer. One of my clients, whose users have slow Internet connections, asked me to do some simple web development for his transport company. He has inter-city buses and he wanted people to be able to register, pay their fare and choose their bus seats through the Internet.
The problem I had was how to help the users perform their transactions fast over the Internet, as they fill out the forms on the different pages. So I did some research on the net to find a solution to the problem; this was in 2005. That was when I discovered Vlad’s articles and his web site. Along the line I have been thinking about Active Client Pages and how they can be improved.
This Article
In this article I present a modified form of Vlad’s approach, and the modification I have for it. I am the one who has done the modification. Well, I call the modification "the script approach" instead of "the modified Vlad’s approach." So I will give you the Script Approach instead of Vlad’s Approach. I will also give you my enhancements to this Script Approach. You can learn more about Vlad and his works through the following links:
http://www.fishwasher.com/acp/acp1.html
http://www.fishwasher.com/jst/page1.html
http://www.fishwasher.com
Next: Active Server Pages and Active Client Pages >>
More JavaScript Articles
More By Chrysanthus Forcha
