[Multi-chat-enduser-chat] update 2004-02-04 (resend)

[Adam I. <OZ_...@au...>]

okay, it seems that some people didn't get this email when I sent it a few 
days ago, so I'll send it again. no changes have been made since I wrote it 
apart from an append to the subject and this intro explanation.


I've got great news, bad news, and great news.
first the background.
any of you who I've previously shown the server to have all noticed the same 
thing: it's slow, very slow.
I told some of you that I intend to get some other software working that would 
improve the speed, and a week or so ago I finally got around to installing 
it, and the speed up for scripts was incredible, instead of 4 seconds loading 
time, it can be as low as half a second.
now the bad news. because this meant changes to the interface code, I've been 
having a lot of trouble adapting the existing code, it was all able to work 
fine after minor tweaks, all except for one thing, communication with the 
server itself (which you'll agree is rather vital). I won't go into the 
details, though if people are curious I can explain. but finally today I 
believe I've hit a solution. so it's back to great news again, I have it 
running, and it's fast. because of the details of the improvement, I won't be 
certain it's fixed until it's been tested more, but it seems okay so far.
at some stage I'll also have to make sure that these changes are backwards 
compatible with the old method, but I doubt there'll be a problem there.
so now the web interface will run up to 10x faster, and after a week or two 
trying to get this to work, I can back to coding the interesting parts.
if people are interested in the details of any of this, or other parts, just 
ask.
any ideas, questions, comments, suggestions, etc, are (as always) welcome to 
this list or to me.
till the next one,
Adam