Active Client Pages: the Script Approach - Active Server Pages and Active Client Pages
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Many professional web sites use server-side applications like PHP, ASP, JSP etc. to generate their pages. All of these systems produce HTML pages at the server, based on data (or some non-standard information) at the server. Active Client Pages, on the other hand, produce HTML pages in the browser at the client, but still use data or information stored at the server.
Well, with Active Client Pages, the very first page may be produced at the server. In practice, the rest of the pages, produced at the client, are actually downloaded from the server in advance.
Definition of Active Client Pages
We have enough of an introduction to understand the definition of Active Client Pages. The definition I am giving you here is my definition. It is not what Vlad or Chuck has given. Active Client Pages is defined as the production of HTML pages at the client computer by the browser using web technology.
The data or information for the HTML pages resides at the server. You need a client script language, such as JavaScript, to produce the HTML pages at the client. I use JavaScript in my articles. I will write many articles using ACP. Let me now welcome you to the new exciting world of Active Client Pages.
Advantages of Active Client Pages
Any information stored at the sever and its analysis can be presented quickly 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 line.
Web pages are becoming voluminous because authors are putting a lot of script into them. This leads to slow downloads. With ACP, the downloads 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 the 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.
Next: Secret of Active Client Pages >>
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