Ulrich Hobelmann said:
I said "information side", meaning stuff like RSS is used for.
Nah, I wouldn't call it a replacement. Maybe of mailinglists with latest
news.
Yes, but for some reason people jumped onto the RSS hype.
You think so? Like on push technology, VRML, and what more? Most of my
friends have no clue what RSS is. Maybe in IE7, when it's more hidden,
people will use it. But I wouldn't call it a hype, unless a hype is
something many people shout you have to have it (hmm...)
I wonder
why.
Heck, even I am subscribed to a bunch of RSSes, because those
institutions don't offer NNTP
But they probably have (or had) a mailing list.
Well, but forums only emulate the posting/reply structure. It would
make more sense to use NNTP for that,
Why? It now works in the browser, you don't need to install another
client. Moreover, many people, especially where I live, don't have a
computer at home. Same for many students I know, they use the computer
at school. And many people I know with a job use the computer at work.
And not everybody wants to install a client for each and every protocol.
Hence why things like webmessenger are used.
and use $WHATEVER, e.g. HTML,
for markup inside the posts. WWW is something else; a bunch of pages
with hyperlinks to each other. Maybe we shouldn't call web forums and
other dynamic websites www, as they don't really follow that purpose.
Nonsense.
They are just abuses of HTTP/HTML/JS for thin clienting.
Like UUencode is abuse of ASCII? LOL!
No, I'm not talking about usenet. I'm glad if the SNR keeps as high
(haha) as it is, and messages in plain text.
I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of
reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.
What is exactly crappy about those forums?
Oh, and I've heard there are people reading our in-house newsgroup
with Outlook.
Amazing, since I always understood that it can't do NNTP.
The huge success of web based message boards seems so say something
entirely different. When I post with X-news, there is a delay, when I
post with my browser, there is a delay. I have no idea which delay is
more significant. Maybe they are too close.
All interaction that's more than clicking a
link has to be emulated with Javascript (heard of Ajax already?
Yes, I even mentioned it in this thread. And what's the problem?
) to
make it more smooth.
HTML was never a programming language, and will never be. Hence for
fancy stuff you have to use a programming language. Nothing wrong with
that.
NNTP has advantages like giving you only the headlines first, so you
can choose what to check out.
Funny, I see the same when I use phpBB. Headlines.
Then you can get the article if you
like (in the communication case)
Yup, same with phpBB, I click a link, and bzzzt.. there is the article,
and the replies to it.
or the news description (in the
RSSoid case)
Yup, there is a mod for phpBB that makes it possible to give each post
besides a title a short description.
and maybe click on a link inside. Saves bandwidth and is
quite faster than waiting for some overloaded PHP server to send you a
bunch of HTML tables.
Hence, overloaded servers shouldn't use PHP, or use special caching
tricks. I can't remember having seen slow boards, even not the ones with
hundreds of simultaneous users (for example phpbb.com).
Responding doesn't involve *any* HTTP requests,
No, but it requires sending your post to an NNTP server. Which takes
time (when I press send, I don't see this window close immediately).
just a keypress and you're typing.
Just a mouse click.
Web forums are stone-age, as are most web-pages.
Maybe you should visit one and check out for yourself. Age has little to
do with it, Usenet is way older, works. IRC is way older, works.
