xyzzyyzzyx writes:
"Avantslash is touting a user hosted perl script that, if paired with any web browser with JavaScript, promises to shave crucial bytes off of the standard Slash-based experience, one of which is our very own SoylentNews. Audiences include those with very limited bandwidth, such as those in developing countries with only 2G mobile access or dialup."
(Score: 4, Informative) by hankwang on Thursday March 13 2014, @07:27AM
"There's no reason that we can't do that straight from the SN source"
Apparently, slashcode is rather convoluted. I think Mattie.p stated that it is difficult to implement skinning. I had a look at slashcode and it seems that there are many, many layers between parsing the cgi parameters and generating output. I couldn't figure out the code path from grepping the code. It looks like making a truly mobile layout, not just applying different css, requires changes all over the code base.
I suspect that slashdot dragging their feet all those years with a mobile version has to do with the difficulty of implementing it. And that was with the original author, CmdrTaco/Rob Malda, on the team.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 1) by goodie on Thursday March 13 2014, @12:58PM
I see... Maybe there is a way for SN to set up something on the side that consumes the data and skins separately from the main code while the mobile version only allows reading articles and comments? I admit that i have never looked at the SN codebase so if is all Perl from the late 90's it may not really have an api that we can call so to speak...
Hey if we move toward a complete rewrite maybe this could be a good starting point to slowly build the new code up...
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday March 14 2014, @12:15AM
Bryan's Pipedot is a completely new, modern rewrite of what Slashcode does [pipedot.org] but I don't believe it uses Perl. Once that is more mature, it may make sense for that code to be the base of a new SN (or whatever name we use).
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]