Forem: Mike Ross 🇺🇸

Mobile-Friendly, LAMP-Based, F/OSS Forum Software

Mike Ross 🇺🇸 — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 07:34:24 +0000

I have yet to see any LAMP-based forum software that is at least as robust as FluxBB yet is either Mobile First or Mobile Friendly in design. Even mobile themes I've seen make you squint to see stuff.

It's time to build one. It also could be built with separation of concerns, KISS, good security, and plugin support. No need for some complex framework like Laravel. Should load easily on shared hosting with and without hiding PHP extensions.

My Soapbox About Resource-Hungry Chrome

Mike Ross 🇺🇸 — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 17:09:32 +0000

I don't need to speak too much on this, actually. It's just that no one speaks about this. I keep hearing, "Gaah, don't use Chrome now. It is resource hungry. It drains your battery! Use a Chromium-fork, Firefox, or Safari." Okay, geniuses, let's build 2 apps. Let's make app A use less CPU and less RAM. Let's make app B use more CPU and more RAM. Guess which one will run faster? Nine times out of 10, app B will run faster. Now, what do people want MOST out of their browser? Faster page load times. So, sure, go ahead and switch your browser to one that dedicates less resources. Not me. I'll stick with one that makes my web pages load faster -- Chrome and Chromium.

Why P2P WebRTC Text Chat Isn't A Good Idea

Mike Ross 🇺🇸 — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 17:39:23 +0000

If you're interested in peer-to-peer (P2P) encrypted text chat, and seem enthused by using WebRTC for that for multiple people at once, then you might want to think again.

So, if you combine this fantastic example of audio/video chat, strip out audio/video...

https://github.com/nielsbaloe/webrtc-php

...implement RTCDataChannel from WebRTC, and make a true, many-to-many, peer-to-peer text chat (where the server is only used for the signalling step, connecting one or more peers together), it really isn't desirable.

Why?

It's simple -- you won't get state management of the last 100 messages or so that were posted. People like to login and see the last 100 messages in a chat. (That's at least -- many will want to see even more.) And if you want state management, then you're better off just using ordinary AJAX and a web server with ordinary state management (database, RAM file, file, YAML file, JSON file, serialized object file, etc.).

For security, ensure you're running https instead of http, and never permit http connections. To be even more secure, you could ensure the state management is an encrypted shared memory component and/or an encrypted file. By requiring extra HTTP authentication headers and utilizing nonces, you can also add even more security.

Free Tool To Document Your API

Mike Ross 🇺🇸 — Fri, 29 May 2020 21:26:44 +0000

Not seeing anything easy that I agreed with on the web, I went to Github and created a QND (Quick -n- Dirty) tool with Boostrap v.3.4.1 and jQuery to document your API. It's super easy to use if you know HTML. If you know Bootstrap (any version), then you might be able to accomplish some tasks sooner or better.

The tool provides a language chooser that you can customize in the upper right, a logo that you can swap, a title of "API Documentation" that you can change, a sidebar of API items (broke out by category title, then API links and sub links), a middle that contains tables and info about your API, and a ride sidebar that shows examples and URLs with automatic code formatting.

Try it out here: https://github.com/volomike/bootdox

This is an early, yet decent beta, and I'm sure there's some room for improvement. Feel free to fork it at Github, make some changes, and then I can integrate your changes.

Why Should I Switch from jQuery to React?

Mike Ross 🇺🇸 — Fri, 08 May 2020 18:59:23 +0000

Please help me understand why I should stop using jQuery and switch all my Javascript coding to React. I've been using jQuery for years and have become highly-skilled with it. (I mean, I answer more questions about jQuery on StackOverflow.com then I ask about it, for one thing.)