Blog - Page 5 - Phil Leggetter

Cloud9 introduce realtime collaborative editing to their online IDE
27 Jun 2012
In my recent talks I always give realtime collaborative code editing as a great example of collaboration. As far as I know Cloud9 are the first to add this features to an online IDE (I've heard such a feature has been available in desktop IDEs for a while). They use socket.io for their solution, which isn't a surprise since they're big on node.js. The recent mail-out must have really driven some traffic they're way as they've reported: We are experiencing the highest demand in our history. If you are having issues with your workspace, we are fixing issues now. Sit tight! Cloud9 IDE (@Cloud9IDE) June 27, 2012 I wonder how much this increase in traffic was influence by this new awesome realtime functionality?
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Talking Realtime at FluentConf
31 May 2012
I recently gave a my Realtime Web Apps in the Wild talk at Fluent Conference in San Francisco. It's a pretty big event with some impressive and well-informed speakers, so it was great to be part of. Slides: You can find the slides from the talk in the mode which controls the second screen application here: The slides also contain links to the demo videos for the appropriate slides, identified by this image: Remember to check out the cool Ghosts demo . If you are interested in this realtime technology then why not sign up for a free Pusher account and add some realtime functionality to your web or mobile application. WebSocket v HTTP latency I was asked some information about HTTP v WebSocket latency so here are some graphs from some a CometD benchmarks blog post demonstrate latency comparisons. CometD 2.4.0 HTTP latency: CometD 2.4.0 WebSocket latency Ericson WebSockets v HTTP Long-Polling comparison I also came across this video which visually demonstrates the latency using a demo.
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Realtime Web Apps in the Wild at HTML5DevConf
21 May 2012
I've just finished giving my presentation on HTML Web Apps in the wild at HTML5DevConf . The Wifi stood up so hopefully the second screen experience really helped to demonstrate how realtime web technologies, and of course Pusher can be used to enhanced interaction and engagement within applications. You can find the slides, 2nd screen app and the slides in "controller mode" via: https://www.leggetter.co.uk/pres/html5devconf/
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A year as a Developer Evangelist
19 May 2012
I can't believe it, but I've now been working for Pusher for a year. It's been an exciting year both in life and in business - and it's great when you spend a lot of the time working on something you are really interested in. So, I thought I'd push out a post covering the things that I've done this year along with a few thoughts.
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Realtime Commenting blog post on Smashing Magazine
9 May 2012
Really pleased to see my realtime commenting system blog post appearing on Smashing Magazine . The post took a reasonable amount of time to write but I really like the way that the application is built from near-scratch and is progressively enhanced, first with AJAX and then realtime web functionality. Big thanks to Bryce Wilson of zendit.com for putting the HTML5, WebSockets (connectivity) and Pusher image together. You can read the How To Build A Real-Time Commenting System post on Smashing Magazine now. And here's the tweet from @smashingmag : New on Smashing Coding: How To Build A Real-Time Commenting System - coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/05/09/bui… Smashing Magazine (@smashingmag) May 9, 2012
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WebSockets realise Comet. They're not an alternative.
22 Apr 2012
Comet is an umbrella term for all the old HTTP-based hacks and is a phrase we want to get rid of. WebSockets are where we want to be; browsers and beyond. I’ve been thinking about writing about this frequently used statement for a while, and I’ve seen a few comments and discussions previously about this.
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Code Africa & the Impact of Realtime
19 Mar 2012
Over the weekend I attended the Code Africa hack weekend which was organised and hosted by The Times. The event saw developers, designers, journalists and entrepreneurs come together to try and form ideas and build prototypes over one weekend. My main takeaways from the event were a much better understanding of the state of technology in Africa, how technology can be used to help the people living within the continent and how realtime technologies can be used not only to improve application functionality, but also provide real impact in demonstrations and presentations.
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jQuery UK 2012 Event - don't always use jQuery
19 Feb 2012
jQuery is a funny thing; it's made JavaScript coding easy for advanced developers and accessible to web designers, and you could even say that the web designer role has very much changed because of it. It's made web interfaces much richer and interactive. But, it's also made us lazy because it's so easy to use. It's time to take a step back and start thinking about best practices. And sometimes that might mean not using jQuery.
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Ideas for #APIHackathon
18 Feb 2012
Realtime location tracking Poll (I'm sure they'll introduce WebHooks soon) the Vodafone API and push realtime updates to a map. A better Betfair Ok, you probably won't be able to build an app that's better than betfair. But using our API in conjunction with Betfair you'll be able to build a realtime betting system. The questions is: can you get realtime data from Betfair? Things like realtime odds? Multiplayer Hangman A simple turn-based game. Take the ideas that Dan from Pearson spoke about and use Pusher to push those results to multiple users. Realtime context sensitive advertising Advertising tends to be pretty static once an application loads. Why not analyse how a user is using an application and dynamically push different adverts to their app… using Pusher :) Any questions please give me a shout. I'm @leggetter on Twitter.
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Considerations when updating the DOM to display realtime data
12 Feb 2012
When data is being delivered to web applications the chances are that you'll be displaying that data within the user interface (UI). In order to do this you need to find the element in the Document Object Model (DOM) and then update it. Whilst the performance of web browsers is improving all the time DOM manipulation can still be costly (use up time and resources) if you are pushing through a lot of data so it's worth keeping the interaction with the DOM to a minimum. You should also consider how you access the DOM. Should you use a utility/library function or should you use native browser methods?
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