Wedge

Public area => Development blog => Topic started by: Nao on June 27th, 2011, 04:46 PM

Title: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 27th, 2011, 04:46 PM
The last few days were interesting, to say the least.

I don't exactly know what's going on in the irony department up there, but it feels like someone's determined to make me waste my time. Apart from the usual real-life issues (including but not exclusively, my driving license, of which you can see a picture on my Facebook page because, yes, I'm that shallow), and from the PC apocalypse I told you about in my last post, I also faced two new problems this week-end.

First of all -- the new computer I bought has the Intel P67 bug with the SATA interface. Meaning half of my SATA ports are not usable. One of them was being used by a hard drive so I just moved it to a safe port, but it now means all 4 of my safe ports are taken (plus my only eSata port), and I can't add any other hard drive. Thankfully I didn't exactly plan to do that either, as I already have USB3 ports which will come in handy in the future.

The only question then, is whether or not I should bring back my computer to the shop. I mean they're not supposed to sell me a buggy motherboard when Intel recognized the bug and everyone recalled their motherboards months ago already. I'm definitely unlucky these days.

Also in the let's have fun category, my ISP apparently decided to go play with my Interwebs cables, and overnight my download rate went from about 4 Mbps to under 10 Kbps. Yes, I'm talking about bits per seconds, not bytes. See, I've been on the Internet since March 1996, at which time I had a trusted 28.8 Kbps US Robotics modem. Anyone remember these? They were the top modem makers at the time. But they still ran at 3 kilobytes a second. It wasn't funny. Well, my bandwidth was one third of that for nearly 48 hours. Back in '96, web pages were just a few kilobytes of HTML, possibly a few images, later a CSS file or two, but jQuery couldn't have even existed at the time. Even the first versions, which were very light and quick to load, would take many seconds to load on an old modem. This is one of the reason why I spent so much time working on reducing the footprint of both jQuery and general JavaScript code in Wedge, when I could just have stopped worrying and dropped the compressor. I was adamant that Wedge SHOULD be faster than SMF in every possible way, and most of the work had to be done on the final output. It took me weeks just to get to the point where, comparing stock copies of Wedge and SMF, I concluded that Wedge felt faster to load than SMF. It's a personal feeling, see, it can hardly be calculated with a stopwatch. But even reaching that point was hopeless to begin with, because we'd decided on including jQuery. So we got the best of both worlds. But I still have to fight myself to determine what version of jQuery we'll ship with in the end. I mean, we started Wedge with 1.4.4, then switched to 1.5.2 with absolutely no benefit to us, and then to 1.6 where I reported a handful of annoying bugs, and once again I don't see any benefits... I guess I'm waiting for 1.7 to determine whether it's worth upgrading. But right now, as it is, I'm actually tempted to go back to 1.4.4, and save the extra 5-6 KB that 1.6.1 uses. 5 to 6 KB may not be much to you, but it's worth a lot to others.

And somehow, after my horrible Sunday experience, I can't help but wonder: won't somebody please think of the analog modems? These days, it's all about working from home and avoid commuting. So, people can go live anywhere they want. What happens to those who happen to find a heavenly place with no DSL lines around? What happens when all of the web is optimized for broadband? Will analog users end up as the digital man's stoneman? Be viewed as disabled, maybe? WAI-ARIA to the rescue, or no future for losers?

We need to stop wasting resources. Just because a font looks cool doesn't mean you should force your user's browser to download it every time they come to your website. Interestingly, that's exactly what I did a few weeks ago. I went for PT Sans as the default header-type font in Wedge, but decided against specifically calling it from Google Fonts, as fast as the service is. I just don't see the point in doing that when you can simply tell your users to download the font and install them by themselves. Then they no longer have to download it again -- and the font can start popping up everywhere.

Install a font and save a tree!
Find your raison d'être!
To arms, my brothers!
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Road Rash Jr. on June 27th, 2011, 05:46 PM
Quote
28.8 Kbps US Robotics modem
Damn that was fast. I remember the 300's where you sent your office worker a memo, walked to his office to let him know I sent one, which he received the next day sometime. :whistle:
Then there was the air tubes. Faster yet when you sprayed WD40 on the canister. :whistle: :whistle:
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Norodo on June 27th, 2011, 07:36 PM
First modem I had was 32kbps. Moved one to ISDN pretty quickly but had that until 2007. I can certainly empathize with modem users.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Road Rash Jr. on June 27th, 2011, 08:36 PM
There was telegraph, and the most reliable, telewoman. Never lost a connection with that one though they were known for going down once in a while  :whistle:
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 27th, 2011, 09:13 PM
This comment thread is going in a direction I wasn't expecting :P

By the way -- for those who have access to the demo... Today I (finally) updated the website with the new design (mostly font change from Segoe UI to Arial. A bold move of which I'm very happy.)

Feel free to share your opinions. Also, you may (or may not) get some page crashes or errors or whatever. This is normal -- I didn't update the database yet -- it needs to be re-created with the new features. I don't know at what point the 'old' demo is compatible with the DB changes.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: billy2 on June 27th, 2011, 09:46 PM
Looks slick.
Did get error using search - suppose you were expecting that as per your post.
Let me know if you want screen shot and text of the errors
cheers
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 28th, 2011, 12:08 AM
Actually, I hadn't tested Search in a while, and the errors were due to not removing a line of code from a deprecated feature. Thanks! Fixed now.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Norodo on June 28th, 2011, 03:31 AM
Dang.

I really want to see this.

And Arial, bold? That's the first time I saw it described as that. Not that I'm bashing it. It is based off of a pretty famous typeface.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 28th, 2011, 06:35 AM
Arial is superbly dull and has few features that make it stand. Its main point is readability. But I recently fell in love with Arial normal 14px. Cleartype does wonders but it's also one of the rare fonts that look great in non-antialiased.

It simply took me 15 years of growing up to appreciate it. Back in the day, Tahoma and verdana were the new Arial Black.
Posted: June 28th, 2011, 06:33 AM

Oh. And what bold is choosing Arial to replace Segoe. Usually people do the opposite.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 28th, 2011, 09:29 AM
Ah AH!

I just had a tech guy from my ISP visit my place. They wanted to look into my line speed because they thought it was suspiciously bad -- I'd always been limited to around 5Mbps (at best) since I moved in.
Well, after looking at my phone connectivity, he pointed out a capacitator that didn't need to be there, he removed it in under a minute and... voilà! My Net speed is now at 8.3Mbps! That's over 850 KB/s in real conditions.

Shouldn't have I got this connection problem yesterday, I'd never have asked for a tech to come over -- and I'd still be 300 KB/s below my new limit (actually, I'd be at half the current speed, because I was limited to 410 KB/s these last few months and never cared to ask why.)
At last something good came out of these problems :)
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: live627 on June 28th, 2011, 09:43 AM
Much better than mine, which averages around 2 or 3 mbps...
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 28th, 2011, 10:58 AM
Were I living in Paris (a couple of miles north from my house), I could have a 100 Mbps fiber connection. Wicked eh. In Japan, I've heard most people are on insane speeds. Net speeds are one of the areas where no one in the world can be treated fairly -- you can hardly know in advance whether the place you'll move to next will have decent speeds.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Norodo on June 28th, 2011, 11:54 AM
Unless, of course, you were to move into urban South Korea. ;)
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 28th, 2011, 12:00 PM
Maybe I'd find myself in the only flat with broken lines :P
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 29th, 2011, 10:11 AM
Back to 5 KB/s overnight. -_-
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Eros on June 29th, 2011, 09:17 PM
Wow. And people keep telling me how much more 'awesome' other countries residential connections are >.>



Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Norodo on June 30th, 2011, 05:17 AM
They are. This is one unlucky guy :>
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Eros on June 30th, 2011, 05:46 AM
Alright Norodo  :lol:
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 30th, 2011, 07:35 AM
Back to broadband this morning.
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: MultiformeIngegno on June 30th, 2011, 11:37 AM
20Mbits here. :whistle:
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: chilly on June 30th, 2011, 10:14 PM
1.7 mbps downstream here -.- <--at beast :P
(and latency is jumping up and down the last few days)

:(((
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Nao on June 30th, 2011, 10:43 PM
My blog post was asking for more than size comparisons. I know it's deeply entrenched into the male psyche, but still :P
Title: Re: « Just when I think I'm back in... »
Post by: Norodo on July 1st, 2011, 01:39 AM
It's 17 cent- oh.

Right.

(click to show/hide)
In actuality I have a 100/10mbps line

Oh right. And save the environment, save resources and all of that. Of course.