The Script Approach to Active Client Pages: Chrys`s Enhancement - Summary of ACP
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Let us talk about ACP in general here. I will give you the summary. In this series, you have seen the script approach. You will see other approaches in different series. This is the summary:
While the user is working, data of any form, including program script code and images, is downloaded from the server in advance, without the knowledge of the user.
This downloaded data has to be stored in some master page.
The pages are produced by script that is in the master page or script downloaded.
The Back Button
With the Script Approach to ACP, the Back button of the browser is not enabled, no matter how many pages you display. This is because no window is changed. If you click the browser Refresh (Reload) button, you would have the very first page.
If you need the Back and Forward buttons, then you should create you own. You can create them at the top left corner inside your web page. You have to write code for them, so that when each one is clicked, the necessary page will be displayed (from the array). With the simple example we had, the pages are in string forms in the array in the frameset script. The functions for the buttons would be easy to write if the contents of the pages do not depend on one another.
Summing Up
Before we end, let us look at the summary of the script approach, which includes my enhancements. I will also introduce the other two approaches.
The Script Approach is based on Vlad's work. The Script Approach uses a Frameset. This is the summary of the Script Approach, including my enhancements.
The master can be the frameset HTML document or it can be a normal HTML document without frameset.
While the user is working, data of any type, including program script code and images, is downloaded from the server in advance, without the knowledge of the user.
This downloading is done by placing scripts at the bottom of each page displayed.
The downloaded data has to be stored in the master page.
Pages are produced by script that is in the master page or script in the head element of a page or script downloaded.
You may have already seen my series on Dev Shed for active client pages, which I call the Ajax Approach. In this four-part series, you will clearly see why I call it that; it uses Ajax heavily. I am the one who came up with the Ajax Approach. I derived it from Chuck's works.
In the next series on active client pages, I will talk about my own approach. This approach combines the Script Approach, the Ajax Approach and my own enhancements.
For each of the three different approaches, you have my enhancements, which are features that are not in Vlad and Chuck's works according to what I read from their web pages. Vlad and Chuck did not give all the advantages I gave you in part one of the series. I have to give you modified versions of their works to suit these advantages.
Each of them has done a good work, which solves certain problems. I give you a different version of their results in order to solve more problems. I think they are still developing their results. So, they may develop them in different dimensions.
Before we finish, let me once again give you the advantages of ACP as I see them.
Advantages of ACP
Any information stored at the server and its analysis can be presented quickly to the user using ACP, independent of whether the Internet line 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 in them. This leads to long download times. With ACP, the download time will no longer be long.
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 and increases 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 will spend 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.
Wow! We have done it. This is the end of the series.
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