I have been thinking lately about what should be executed client-side vs. server-side and was curious what others thoughts are.
Let's take the following example. A user has selected X pieces of furniture. On a single page, they are shown a list of the furniture items with specific info about each piece (name, dimensions, manufacturer, list of parts etc). Much of this info wouldn't be shown by default but is expandable. The user can delete furniture items or add new ones. When they add a new one it is immediately added to the page without reloading. *Server-side heavy solution* You could implement this mostly server-side with some javascript to expand info, add and delete items, etc. When the user added an item, you could use AJAX to build the new block server-side and just add it to the page when returned. *Client-side heavy solution* Server-side you could generate a simple javascript variable with the page's data (perhaps in JSON) and then generate all the page's content with javascript client-side (you would of course still do all the layout server-side). This is actually much easier than it might seem. Prototype has some nice DOM editing that is very clean. *My Thoughts* Lately, I am leaning toward the Client-side heavy solution for the following reasons (feel free to argue with me): - I make up that the server can handle more users because less work is done there. (can someone verify or refute this?) - Cleaner delineation for presentation layer because all the main content is present with javascript. If I want to change the way things look, I just go to one place. If it is done server-side, I go one place for initial presentation (server-side) and another for on- page dynamic presentation (which has to be javascript). - Possibly better user experience because there is no delay between adding an item and it showing up on their screen (don't have to wait for AJAX call to return). However, there would be a delay when the page first loads while javascript creates the content (I use a "page loading . . ." message that disappears typically in less than 1 second). I could for certain sites, that a delay when someone adds a new item might be preferable to when the page just loads. What are your thoughts? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
