Interestingly, the original incarnation of tweets in Google (circa 2010) was fully real-time, with new tweets on a query coming in and getting displayed on the SRP as soon as they were posted. My friend spent a significant portion of his tenure doing a custom scrollbar so that if you scrolled up, it would pause the scrolling while you read the tweets, and then if you returned to the final scroll position, you'd see what you missed.
Ultimately the feature was discontinued over contractual differences, and then when they brought it back a couple years ago (after I left Google), it looks like they went with a fully static page. I think that real-time webpages has been one feature that every techie thinks is really cool and just around the corner, but the general public just finds annoying.
> I think that real-time webpages has been one feature that every techie thinks is really cool and just around the corner, but the general public just finds annoying.
Ain't that the truth. Granted, I still think it - like many features - are great in concept, but very difficult to get "right". It's really hard to beat static pages for simplicity. Nothing is changing on the user, the scroll bar isn't jumping around in size, they know exactly where they left off, etc etc.
[+] [-] nostrademons|8 years ago|reply
Ultimately the feature was discontinued over contractual differences, and then when they brought it back a couple years ago (after I left Google), it looks like they went with a fully static page. I think that real-time webpages has been one feature that every techie thinks is really cool and just around the corner, but the general public just finds annoying.
[+] [-] notheguyouthink|8 years ago|reply
Ain't that the truth. Granted, I still think it - like many features - are great in concept, but very difficult to get "right". It's really hard to beat static pages for simplicity. Nothing is changing on the user, the scroll bar isn't jumping around in size, they know exactly where they left off, etc etc.
[+] [-] volodarik|8 years ago|reply