Realtime is the best time
For one reason or another, I’ve been super interested in realtime on the web. I looked into how it worked and put up a quick version of a realtime feed for enjoysthin.gs. It worked by polling the server every few seconds and grabbing the latest content.
That sucked.
It was slow and hard on the server and utterly unscalable. It required a lot of hits to the server and a ton of extra database calls. Essentially, every time I polled the server I needed to make a new database call to look for new data.
Well, I’ve changed it. Now I can push content directly to your browser. As soon as I get it, I pass it on to you.
I’ll update the firefox plugin (which uses the old bad way), but until then I suggest you install the sidebar.
