Thread: RE: [Dynapi-Chat] [OT] two-way browser communication, no joke.

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Sounds cool Scott. I wish the web site had some simple demos that could be
tried without installing a local server. It would be nice to see if it
worked through the firewall (for monitoring our web servers for instance).

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Andrew LePera [mailto:sc...@sc...]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:07 PM
To: dyn...@li...
Subject: [Dynapi-Chat] [OT] two-way browser communication, no joke.

This is somewhat off-topic, but I thought it might interest the DynAPI
crowd, since DHTML and dynamic content go hand in hand.

For a couple months, I've been working for a company called KnowNow. 
Today, we officially launched and a developer version of our product is
available.  I'll tell you what it does, and then why the DynAPI crowd
might be interested in it.  I apologize if this comes off sounding like
marketing-speak :/

KN makes a product which is an event router.  It's a mini-server you
install alongside your current server setup. In a nutshell, the router
acts like telephone operator, connecting incoming calls to their
destinations.  Except the calls are actually events, similar (but not
limited to) JavaScript events.  When an event is "published" to the
router, the router broadcasts it to any "subscribers" listening for
certain events.  This all happens across HTTP in realtime.

What this means is *two-way* communication between browsers, in as close
to realtime as the server will allow.

What does this have to do with DynAPI and DHTML?  Well, the router has a
JavaScript API.  When you do something that generates an event in
JavaScript (not just native events, you can create event object
yourself, like the DynAPI does), you can use the API to publish that
event to the router and broadcast it to anyone listening for that type
of event. This is all done without a plug-in and no client add-ins. No
Java, no ActiveX.

For example, let's say that Robert, Pascal and myself are looking at a
DynAPI page that uses the Sprite widget to create a spaceship for each
of us.  When I press the A key, my spaceship moves forward.  At the same
time, an event is created and published to the router, which broadcasts
it to Robert and Pascal.  Their browsers are subscribed to the same
router that my browser is publishing to.  Pascal is a continent away,
but he *sees my ship move* across his screen.  So does Robert.  When
Robert moves his ship, he publishes events to the router, and Pascal and
I see Robert's sprite move.

Any DHTML/DynAPI application can be KnowNow-enabled.  You can build
things like realtime chatrooms, IM clients, games, MenuLists that
populate themselves with data from other sources, etc.  I know this
because I built half of the demos on the KN developer site.  And even
cooler, it's not limited to JavaScript and DHTML.  You can publish and
subscribe to events within a Visual Basic app, Java, Flash and C++,
too.  One of my coworkers and I built two chat clients, one in
HTML/JavaScript and one in VB.  He types 1337-speak into the VB clien
and it shows up on the DHTML version, and vice versa.  It is truly
insane.

Anyway, sorry if this sounds like proseltyzing. It's just that I've had
to keep my mouth shut for a long time about this, and I kept thinking
"DHTML people will *love* this."  Besides, the DynAPI group has some of
the most talented DHTML people around, and we're always looking for ways
solve the problems of getting data from the backend, so here's a cool
toy.

Links of note:

http://developer.knownow.com - get a demo-grade router here.
http://www.knownow.com

More about what KN stuff does:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/dgillmor/dg062701.htm

-- scottandrew

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