[WikiEN-l] frames

[Brion Vibber]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> I have a potential solution to the heavy server use problem.  We could
> make an optional frame skin where the person only loads the article
> page instead of reloading the whole thing. With the pictures in the
> skin that reload every time on some browsers, this could signifigantly
> take some load off the server.

I'll admit I'm prejudiced against frames ;) but I don't think that would
help.

Since many of the links in the sidebar, top, and bottom of the page are
specific to the page being looked at, they're not really suitable for
framing (unless supported by javascript -- shudder!)

The logo images and the style sheet are separate files, and will be cached
by any web browser, separately from the page. On the occasions that they
are requested again (for instance, when someone hits "reload" on a wiki
page that's already up), the files are still unchanged and the server
responds as such, without needing to send them again. Further, if they do
get resent, they are just static files and it's a snap to slurp them off
the disk and send them down the network pipe, no additional processing
required.

Our limiting factor isn't network bandwidth; thanks to Jimbo we have an
obscene amount of available bandwidth. It's processing time and memory
(where using up memory means we have to grab stuff from the disk more,
which is slower and uses more processing time). It's the database
(particularly mass operations like searching, watchlists, most wanted,
orphans, etc) and the wiki->html parsing that need to be better optimized.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)