[Seaside] push-model of interactive web pages

[Jason Rogers]

I just came back from the Real World Ajax Seminar in New York City. 
The seminar was pretty good in general, but one really neat thing I
saw was the innovation of a push model type of live update.

The trick is to embed a small (1px by 1px) flash file.  This embedded
object has the capability of opening a socket to the server.  The web
page can then register itself to the server over that socket and
bada-boom-bada-bing the server can PUSH information to all connected
clients.

The two demos of this functionality I saw were in the context of Flex
programming and Ruby on Rails.

The Flex guy showed outlining directions on a map in a browser --
those outlines showed up immediately in the two other browsers that
were connected to the server on different sessions.

The Ruby on Rails guy showed several examples of adding and deleting
records in a web app through various interfaces with the server
(browser, commandline, etc.).  These adds and deletes showed up
immediately in the other browsers that were connected in different
sessions.

Pretty neat stuff!  This is definitely something that could be a big
win for Seaside.  I will be working on it over the next month to see
if I can implement it.  However, if someone beats me to the punch: all
the better.

--
Jason Rogers

"Where there is no vision, the people perish..."
    Proverbs 29:18