Wedge

Public area => The Pub => Topic started by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 06:07 PM

Title: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 06:07 PM
I was wondering whats thoughts and considerations there were toward the lower platforms? It really would be nice to have a bit better wap2 at the very least, maybe a bit more interactive, a bit more interesting. And is dragoon either going to write a wedge version if smf4mobile, or maybe even an invluded package? Thx
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 5th, 2011, 06:09 PM
Original WAP and imode are both gone. What to do with WAP2 is still a question but leaving it in with few enhancements, and a decent mobile theme are the plans thus far.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 06:10 PM
Awsome :)
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Nao on April 5th, 2011, 06:41 PM
As for Dragooon-- up to him! He could start now-- or never ;)

:edit: 4k posts!
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Dragooon on April 5th, 2011, 06:42 PM
I may write one up for Wedge, but when it has matured a bit more(Actually when Nao/Arantor aren't radically changing it every week).
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Nao on April 5th, 2011, 06:49 PM
I see you've learned your lesson! :niark:
Posted: April 5th, 2011, 06:48 PM

Of course, if it was part of the vanilla package, we could update it along with our other modifications :P
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Dragooon on April 5th, 2011, 06:51 PM
Quote from Nao/Gilles on April 5th, 2011, 06:49 PM
I see you've learned your lesson! :niark:
Posted: April 5th, 2011, 06:48 PM

Of course, if it was part of the vanilla package, we could update it along with our other modifications :P
Oooo tempting. I may give it a shot and port the thing over and try to maintain the features(It'll be easier since everything's using jQuery), but not in the next 2 weeks atleast.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 08:13 PM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: DoctorMalboro on April 5th, 2011, 10:50 PM
An IRC chat is heavy and most host don't allow them... A simple shoutbox would be pretty neat.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 10:51 PM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 5th, 2011, 10:59 PM
Quote
It could be done completely in php and jquery
Yes, it *can*, but I strongly advise against it, because it will flatten any server once it gets remotely busy, no matter how you have it configured.

Option 1: COMET style, long running HTTP kept-alive polls, held open until there's an update... which is efficient right up until you consider that Apache will force a new PHP threadprocess for each connection, which means you're talking a persistent weight of 20MB or so per connection, and it doesn't take many connections before you either hit the oomkiller, or you've exhausted the memory pool for genuine connections.

If you want to go down the road of nginx+PHP-FPM at this point, be aware that most hosts don't support that yet, because it's fundamentally different to how they're set up. Yes, it will cope with thousands of edge connected HTTP connections driven by event handling, and use little memory in handling it, but you lose the ability to properly authenticate to it.


Option 2: AJAX style, regular polling. Let's see, even with 20 users polling every 10 seconds (which is a low number of users and much slower than most of the existing AJAX chat solutions), you still have to run the gamut of Wedge startup in order to authenticate the user, which means you're pulling an awful lot into memory to achieve it and still be efficient.


Before I go any further, let me make it known that on one site I run, I *have* such a system; I wrote it from scratch as a plugin to SimpleDesk (which means it installs without any file edits of its own whatsoever). It's AJAX style, and it's very, very carefully written to be incredibly efficient; it even uses a specially modified version of the SMF API that I wrote for 2.0 to make authentication an order of magnitude cheaper than SSI.php.

IOW, been there, seen it, done it, and it would flatten most low end hosts, even with the lightweight solution I have.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 11:13 PM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 5th, 2011, 11:18 PM
Great, so in addition to trying to handle PHP, MySQL, various server systems, and learn iOS in my spare time, we gotta learn desktop programming as well...

Honestly, I can tell you now, to save you wasting any more time on this, we are not going to do it. Someone else can deal with all the issues that arise, because we have better things to burn our time on.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 5th, 2011, 11:46 PM
Damn arantor, way to think positive. Noone said i was going to use the arantor 2000, remote programmer, for the ap. Lol i was thinking if a spin off addition to wedge later on when i can actually help code it. Lol
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 5th, 2011, 11:48 PM
That's the thing: I think pragmatic, not positive. A project I was working on towards the end of last year had to be scalable, by which I mean, single server, handling tens of thousands of concurrent live connections, and run it in PHP - I've been there, seen what's involved in making stuff like this work. It's specialised at best, at worst... it's that step beyond.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 12:02 AM
I beleive that wedge is that step beyond, potentially a category of its own. Brought into reality by pragmatic dreamers. You got 2 choices: ban me from the wedge site, or let me dream with ya. If ever god grants me the chance to, i will put some walk with my talk.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: live627 on April 6th, 2011, 12:09 AM
Ban him, hard and fast :niark:
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 12:14 AM
What in the world does :niark: mean? Lol
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: live627 on April 6th, 2011, 12:17 AM
"niark" is an evil smiley, equivalent to >:D :P
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 12:20 AM
Oh, don't get me wrong, I like hearing some of the ideas that are floating about, but there's a distinct divide between what's a cool idea and what we're going to add to Wedge.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: live627 on April 6th, 2011, 12:25 AM
Oh, I like that idea. Let's put it in Wedge! :niark:
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 12:27 AM
Quote from live627 on April 6th, 2011, 12:25 AM
Oh, I like that idea. Let's put it in Wedge! :niark:
THAT's already implemented :P
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: live627 on April 6th, 2011, 12:29 AM
Wait, a general round of laughter?
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 12:32 AM
No, the idea to put good stuff into Wedge and keep out stuff that while cool, is impractical.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 12:45 AM
Im already covertly talking to nao about the arantor 2000 plug in. Lol and dont even have the final list of what will be in wedge, i havent even seen the code yet. :p whats wedges aeva? Lol
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 12:47 AM
Quote
dont even have the final list of what will be in wedge
And we do? :P
Quote
whats wedges aeva
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=977 only better integrated, and used to replace the existing attachments system as well.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 01:02 AM
Not what i meant. What is wedges top mod? Lol
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 01:04 AM
Given that there are currently absolutely no mods that work on it... it doesn't have one.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 01:54 AM
exactly :)
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 01:55 AM
I don't get your point.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:09 AM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: live627 on April 6th, 2011, 02:19 AM
By that last paragraph do you mean don't  imitate SMF or phpBB and the likes?
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:20 AM
what i mean is, if you going to wedge it, wedge the shit out of it.  :D
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Michael on April 6th, 2011, 02:21 AM
Quote from Arantor on April 5th, 2011, 11:18 PM
Great, so in addition to trying to handle PHP, MySQL, various server systems, and learn iOS in my spare time, we gotta learn desktop programming as well...

Honestly, I can tell you now, to save you wasting any more time on this, we are not going to do it. Someone else can deal with all the issues that arise, because we have better things to burn our time on.
Lol...Arantor Remember, They say everything is bigger in Texas!
I assume the number lines in the coding, memory, server resources would also follow suit...  :hmm:

~MM~
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:24 AM
you got to remember, each client has a computer also. :)

if the server is running thin, pass it to theirs, they got plenty.  :D
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 02:33 AM
Quote from texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:24 AM
you got to remember, each client has a computer also. :)

if the server is running thin, pass it to theirs, they got plenty.  :D
But there's no way to know what kind of computer it is. It might be a smartphone, with limited capacity and/or network bandwidth.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:54 AM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Snape on April 6th, 2011, 03:26 AM
Bringing this slightly back on topic- namely, the mobile experience- I'd like to take this a step further without hopefully ending up in the wedge wishlist area that you guys didn't want this to devolve into...

Looking at the various attempts to make SMF mobile detect friendly, I was actually thinking what about taking that to the next level supporting locations in a forum software package?  There are things users may want/not want enabled when logged in from a mobile device/work computer/home computer.  What would be the logic behind tying user preferences to the user's source IP address, which could be assigned a location tag?  Therefore if a user wants to have in-line images disabled at work or an arcade link active from home, they could be set within those profile locations.

Too complex?  More trouble than its worth?
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 03:43 AM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: DoctorMalboro on April 6th, 2011, 05:37 AM
There a lot of stuff that should and can be added... but if they add everything, why the hell code mods?
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 10:50 AM
Quote
look at the source on a facebook page. the whole thing really is some form of java. and the server picks up on what version it needs to prepare and then sends it.
And it's as buggy as hell, and the mobile versions (of which there are now multiple, separate versions) do a whole lot less.

The other thing is most of that JS is used for semi-realtime updates against their massive server farm of which the PHP is mostly compiled with Hiphop; neither of these things (server farm, compiled PHP) are available to the vast bulk of users who would use Wedge, and I'm damned if I'm going to spend hours and hours trying to explain to idiots who just can't or won't read how to install it. Been there, thanks, I used to be support for Sphinx, the search component, and that was bad enough on trying to get people to compile it.

One other word that springs to mind with JS: accessibility. Show me a decent visual-impaired browser that can handle all the changes Javascript makes to the page without screwing it up and I'll show you many, many more users who don't have that.

Yes, it's all well and good to shoot for the stars and kick off a whole new paradigm, but that isn't where we're going, not yet. Wedge 1.0 is the retooling of SMF with new features and overhauling a number of things that should have been done years ago, not paradigm shifting.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Nao on April 6th, 2011, 12:23 PM
@Snape> Not worth it I'd say. Platform-specific though, maybe.

Re: using client side to generate pages: no. I can see how it's technically doable, and several sites are doing it already, but accessibility-wise it's just a bag of shit and troubles, disabling JS means the website isn't even viewable at all, and, well... If it were something realistic to consider, don't you think more websites would be doing that? ;)

Re: chat, just because I don't like that doesn't mean I'm not open to implementing one for the vanilla Wedge, but I don't think it'd be very wise either.

There are many techs that allow communication between clients but none of them is really perfect. Even WebSockets has its drawbacks (and believe me, the more HTML5-propaganda tech I could use, the better for Wedge.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology

Problem is, there's nothing preventing the addition of a chat system, as long as it's not updated automatically through any of these techs. Meaning, YOU refresh the page yourself. I think there are better techs to communicate in real time than a website anyway. Facebook does its best but even then, they have yet to release a perfect tool IMHO. This is really why I like Noisen/wedge.org's thought system so well (in Wedge.org it's only for the Friends group, so go to noisen.com if you want to see it in action), it's because it's closer to the type of conversation you get on Twitter -- where, I believe, no one complains that they can't actually chat in real time...?

NB: can't bother to re-read the entire topic to see if I missed anything. Feel free to wake me up in case I forgot something.
Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: texasman1979 on April 6th, 2011, 02:07 PM
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Title: Re: Wap2, imode?
Post by: Arantor on April 6th, 2011, 03:12 PM
Quote
Think radical, that is how inovation takes place.
You never looked at my sm.org signature.
Quote
Dammit just zip me a copy to run on a local server so i can feast my eyes. The anticipation is killing me.
As we have said before, we are not allowed to do so.