Re: Org based websites w/o export

[Detlef Steuer <detlef.steuer@gmx.de>]

Am Tue, 20 May 2014 13:43:20 +0200
schrieb Bernd Haug <bernd.haug@xaidat.com>:

> On 19 May 2014 19:58, Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Jr works by having javascript render the markdown to HTML. That is,
> > you write markdown, upload markdown w/o running a generator, and the
> > generator runs in the browser of the viewer.
> >
> > This is efficient for the server (simpler pages) and author (no
> > need to run a static site generator), but may be globally
> > inefficient for a popular site (many browser doing rendering).
> 
> I'd phrase this point more strongly:
> The whole concept of intensive client-side rendering
> is fashionable, but an eminently bad idea from a
> number of perspectives.

Thank you for this post! This fashion together with the love for an
unbearable amount of whitespace instead of content on "modern" websites
is irritating. (Ok, at least for me.) 

If you really suffer from converting .md to .html  just automate it with some
makefile and scp magic. You can hack away like in the case of client site 
rendering and you don´t imply the consequences Bernd outlines.

On the server side compression of static pages should help a lot.
(There is a trade off between energy demand and compression of course,
but .gz decompression is very efficient.)

> 
> I ran my list past Ken and he encouraged me to post them (thanks), so
> here goes:
> 
> 1) UX:
> 
> Rendering in the browser's rendering engine is always faster than
> rendering in JS and then in the browser's rendering engine. Speed
> matters.

Think about the runtime and longevity of your mobile phone.
For most this should be a killer argument. :-)

Regards
Detlef 



> 
> 2) Engineering ("l'art pour l'art"):
> 
> Not caching the most eminently cacheable thing on Earth, the rendering
> of static web pages, makes baby Dijkstra cry.
> 
> 3) Economics (egoistical):
> 
> Search engines are optimized for interpreting and presenting HTML. If
> you want to be found, have your content in HTML.
> 
> 4) Economics (global):
> 
> Electricity ain't free; why spend it many times over even if it's not
> you doing the spending?
> 
> 5) Ecology
> 
> There are impacts to wasting power beyond its monetary price.
> 
> ----
> 
> So, enough with the criticism. How to constructively approach this?
> 
> If the size difference between HTML and MD makes a difference for
> your bandwidth cost, maybe consider just precompressing your files
> offline (this, too, can be done prior to uploading…) and teaching your
> web server that for files x.html, deliver x.html.gz as a pre
> compressed stream first if available.
> 
> Cheers, Bernd
> 
>