[lug] off topic web Q

[rm at mamma.varadinet.de]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 04:26:38PM -0700, D. Stimits wrote:
> I'm trying to use cgi, and avoid javascript entirely, on a web site that
> runs on SunOS/Sparc 80. The web server itself is a commercial server
> that is very very close in design to Apache (but offers better virtual
> domain and server farm support).

Please shre the name of that server. While i can imagine improvements
in loadbalancing  / clustering for Apache i'd like to see how to top
virtual domains.

> Here is the question, which someone here might know. Does anyone know of
> a cgi means to take a collapsible "+" symbol, such as from the tree of a
> file browser with a collapsed directory tree, and convert it back and
> forth with the uncollapsed/expanded "-" version, without javascript, and
> without resending the entire page? I'm guessing this isn't possible
> since it implies an active intelligence within the browser itself. 

Well, it's pretty tough without resending the page, simply because after
the browser renders your page ther's nothing your server can do. The 
request is answered on the HTTP level, you send your data (i.e. content-
length amount of bytes). In real CGIs the server actually kill your
CGI process and closes your connection to the browser (unless you take
special care to stop that).
Since all the fancy new extensions to HTML (like DHTML) are based on or 
implemented on/with JavaScript you're pretty much out of luck here.
Of course there's allways the ubiquious Java Applet, but i don't think
you'd be happy with this.

> Any
> suggested reading or HOWTO's, etc, would be appreciated (preferably
> something I can see on the web). Implementations can be in almost any
> cgi compatible format, preferably C++, Python, Perl, or PHP (my weird
> sense of esthetics prefers C++, followed by Python).

Ralf Mattes

P.S: <H1><BLINK>+</BLINK></H1>