Comments on: Running CPU Intensive JavaScript Computations in a Web Browser

By: AndrÃ©s Testi

AndrÃ©s Testi — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:59:35 +0000

This trouble is focused in the GWT’s IncrementalCommand interface. I’m developing a text compressor with this pseudo concurrent approach.

By: Brad Harris

Brad Harris — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:29:20 +0000

@Julien – Good point, the examples definitely show a way to overcome that hurdle.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:09:40 +0000

An old technique to solve a still current problem, so it is good to revisit it, especially where resources are a consideration. This is making me think about mobile browsing applications: A JS computation can be CPU intensive because it’s running on a 400MHz ARM rather than a 3Ghz P4 — heavy code blocks are relative to the platform.
I am inspired to do some mobile browser tests, as it’s often very hard to determine if a device is hanging or I’m not pressing the screen right!

By: Julien Lecomte

Julien Lecomte — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:59:36 +0000

Well, the browser *can* handle CPU intensive computations to some extent (see the examples linked in the original article) and hopefully, with the next generation JavaScript engines (Tamarin), this will be even more true. The real question is whether doing that computation on the client is the *best* approach, and this depends on your situation.

By: Julien Lecomte

Julien Lecomte — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:00:13 +0000

@Scott

I totally agree with you, and point this out in the last paragraph of the original article.

By: Scott Schiller

Scott Schiller — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:48:37 +0000

This and the continuation approach are neat ideas, but I would also argue that if your code is encountering very heavy blocks (number crunching, large DOM node creation or ?) often, your approach could probably be refactored a little bit or perhaps moved to the backend if appropriate. I say this only because of JS’ current non-threaded, blocking-type behaviour (“this is what we have to work with”, etc.)

By: mdmadph

mdmadph — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:11:55 +0000

…now why didn’t I think of that? I’m always locking my browser down with JavaScript — I usually just depend on nice, muted, pastel-coloured “waiting” screen to pacify users…

By: Julien Lecomte

Julien Lecomte — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:44:07 +0000

@Robbert,

This isn’t a new pattern, of course. My goal in this article was to present this well known pattern under a new light, and discuss ways of reducing the overhead associated with it without sacrificing user interface reactivity.

Regards

By: Robbert Broersma

Robbert Broersma — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:37:40 +0000

This method is being used for over ten years now. Have a look at something way more advanced: continutations.

http://marijn.haverbeke.nl/cps/