Push content was an idea developed
circa 1997. It envolves writing
programs that send
information on a regular basis to the
client without the
client asking for it. Generally used to deliver
news, and other constantly changing information. Thought to be wonderful because "Clients do not have to waste
cycles and
network traffic to
poll servers." Supposed to be the
Next Big Thing at the time, it was integrated into both
IE and
Netscape 4 as the next
platform of that endless
steel-cage death match.
The main reasons push failed:
- It required more Cpu cycles than was required to crack DES.
- 95% of the content provided could be found by turning on the telly.
- Download times for the 'instant information' were obscene. Sort of went against the whole gist of the thing.
Push does live on, but in a different form.
HTML has become more
dynamic with its various
extentions,
Perl and
PHP have become widely used, and information has become easy to come across without loading some
behemoth of a program.