Hi Nathan,
SPAs are said to be "responsive" in that pages are not "refreshed";
The term "responsive" has a different meaning when talking about "responsive web design" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design for a brief introduction).
Basically, a responsive web site adjusts the page layout depending on the size of the browser screen. So, it's one website, but it looks different when viewed on a desktop versus a tablet versus a mobile phone. An example is the NASA website at:
http://www.nasa.gov/
You can see the responsiveness of the NASA web site on a desktop or laptop by resizing the browser. Start by viewing the website with your browser maximized. Then, slowly resize your browser to make the browser screen size narrower and narrower. As you make the browser screen size narrower, the elements on the website will rearrange, the navigation menu will change, and the size of text will change.
Responsive websites are a way to give mobile users a good experience without developing a mobile app. You develop one website that changes how it looks when viewed on devices with different screen sizes. Of course, the mobile users have to open their browsers and navigate to the website. I personally don't mind setting up favorites in the browser on my tablet. But other people hate using browsers on their mobile devices. They want apps.
A well-executed SPA will always be "responsive" in the sense that it doesn't require the entire page to refresh for changes in the information displayed on the page. But an SPA may or may not be a "responsive" website in terms of changing its layout depending on screen size. The term responsive is thus ambiguous and can be confusing if we don't specify the meaning intended.
You did specify the meaning you intended. I just wanted to point out the responsive has more than one meaning.
Thanks,
Kelly
-----Original Message-----
From: WEB400 [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2015 3:12 PM
To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)
Subject: [WEB400] Single Page Applications
Probably a poor choice to start a topic that has such far reaching impact as this, on a Friday afternoon. Maybe we can pick it up on Monday.
This is a natural extension of the discussion this past week about which server architecture might be best to support single page applications, or SPA's.
I'll begin by asking, what is a single page application? Popular terms like SPA tend to get hijacked by anyone interested in promoting a product.
Based on my readings, SPAs are essentially static content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), which have UI components which adapt to "data", which may be downloaded after the static content.
SPAs are said to be "responsive" in that pages are not "refreshed"; just page elements which adapt visually as data is refreshed asynchronously over the life cycle of the application.
Much of the promotion of SPAs seems to originate from frameworks like Angular and Bootstrap, which supplement HTML with "declarative elements"
such as <tags> and <tag attributes> which are bound to JavaScript and CSS libraries.
SPAs have far reaching implications in that traditional server-based frameworks and tools which are designed to generate HTML, manage sessions, and provide gateways to data appear to be superfluous; perhaps obsolete.
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