3 ms·
What's a "static web server"? I haven't seen this term. A webserver for only static pages, i.e. it won't talk to a runtime? But it's "for serving web apps", th
by ds9 13y ago
What's a "static web server"? I haven't seen this term.
A webserver for only static pages, i.e. it won't talk to a runtime? But it's "for serving web apps", this means all the dynamic content is pulled from client side JS? Then you would still need programs on the server to answer AJAX requests.
I did not find an explanation on the page or by Googling.
- sehrope 13y agoA server that only serves static files. It doesn't enable the use of dynamic content like CGI[1]. Compare this to something like Apache or nginx. Both can serve static files but also support a number of ways of either directly running scripts (ex: mod_perl or mod_php in Apache) or proxying to other servers that handle dynamic content. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ds9 13y agoOK, then, sorry if I'm being dense, but how can it be "for serving web apps"? App seems an odd term for a site consisting of only static files.
- packetslave 13y agoPerhaps you've heard of this new language, JavaScript?
- ds9 13y agoStill not much of an app unless the JS does AJAX, but then it's talking to a server that's running some dynamic process, maybe with DB access etc. - right?
- Isofarro 13y agoNot necessarily. You can make an ajax request to a static resource. The server doesn't have to be a dynamic process. Static resources are just files. A client-side JavaScript Twitter could be done this way. Every tweet, or timeline can be pre-baked into a static json file, and ajaxed in. Twitter can then be simplified to a backend application that updates these files. Granted, tweeting is a separate matter; that requires an endpoint that processes data.
- WhitneyLand 13y agoCross-domain REST is the big win. MongoLab, APIs, Widgets, etc.
- rsync 13y agothttpd is probably the most well known "simple" webserver, and is very, very fast[1]. In fact, I think the op needs to explicitly mention thttpd on the page for shortfin and provide a performance comparison, since that's all anyone really cares about ... "is it faster than thttpd ?" [1] http://acme.com/software/thttpd/benchmarks.html http://acme.com/software/thttpd/benchmarks.html
- erikig 13y agoThe citation should include a caveat that the benchmarks are from 1998 and that they were ran on a Pentium 100Mhz.
- PommeDeTerre 13y agoThe notes very clearly state, "The benchmark test system is a 297MHz Ultra Sparc with 256MB RAM / 512MB swap running Solaris 2.6". What you're referring to is merely an observation about the actual capabilities of web servers in general at the time: "Most of these servers have enough oomph to keep a T1 saturated, running on a lowly 100MHz Pentium or maybe even a 486."
- WhitneyLand 13y agoOne big thing with this is to develop a web app consisting solely of static files. The trick is that most of the dynamic stuff you get from REST services on OTHER servers. For example, people maintain static blogs with Jekyll and can enable commenting with an HTML widget. Or your app can use MongoLab for it's back end data which again is a separate server. It turns out you can do almost anything just developing with your own static files. This is one of the reasons hosting prototype web apps on DropBox is popular.