Right now, we render our page layout on the server, thus wasting precious bandwidth sending the same header, footer and menus all over again every single time. AJAX techniques have evolved to reload only the inner part of every page, but they require clever URL manipulation or ‘back’, ‘refresh’ and bookmarks won’t work, and they impose strong constraints on page layout and on the way the server responds to requests.
Why not do it the other way around? Have every page include the same layout-generating JavaScript file (kept in the browser cache for optimum performance) ! This is the idea behind the last-minute-skin pattern.
Interesting stuff. I don’t relish the idea of taking the vile HTML our designers produce and creating the skin files. Nice proof of concept though – I’ll have to keep an eye out for an excuse to use it ; )
Interesting stuff. I don’t relish the idea of taking the vile HTML our designers produce and creating the skin files. Nice proof of concept though – I’ll have to keep an eye out for an excuse to use it ; )