Full Page Refresh Web Applications
Browsers by default implement the full page refresh paradigm, meaning that every time a page is loaded all of the previous page's state is lost.
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Evolution Of Static Content to Dynamic Content Web Applications
Web browsers were developed in a time when the content they displayed was expected to be articles that would be updated only
when the author decided to upload a new file. This kind of content is referred to as static content.
When navigating Full Page Static Content Web Applications, users were expected to follow hyperlinks
around the internet reading the information they needed and possibly using the
back button to review things they already looked at. Every page visited was designed to stand alone
and therefore necessitated a full page refresh every time it was displayed.
At the time, no one imagined accessing one's bank account or running a word processor through a web browser.
Use of web browsers has evolved to a great deal since then, and applications serving dynamic content
to browsers are common. Yet, most of these applications, even though they render content specific
to the user and the user's bank account etc., still utilize a full page refresh to update the page.
Evolution Of Dynamic Content Web Applications To The Single Page Application (SPA)
Contrary to static web pages, pages in a dynamic web application require coordination of
information between them. In order to persist information between full page refreshes in a
web application, developers have to maintain memory objects on the server and send and
retrieve information from the browser with each web page navigation. This way of doing
things not only creates a lot of traffic but also makes developing web applications complicated
and expensive. It also degrades the user experience by making them wait for everything to be
refreshed even when they have only made tiny changes to the page.
WebRocketX eliminates the need for full page refresh by leveraging Ajax and dynamic HTML inclusion
to pull in content without leaving the page. Trips to the server send and retrieve much less information,
and are also simpler because the purpose of these trips can be much more targeted. The user experience
is enhanced and the cost of development is greatly decreased.
WebRocketX is not just for dynamic website development. Single Page Static Website (SPSW) development
is also supported, which results in a much faster static website and eliminates the tedium of maintaining
duplicate content such as headers and and footers in multiple pages. Previously, including templates in pages
required server side technology such as PHP, and WordPress. Now everything can once again be done on the client
and the Webserver can simply just be a source of files.