Wed, Jun 25, 2008, 11:33pm
Mac-specific Server Coding
Programming » Web Applications
I
've been thinking of some neat things I could do with the next generation of my OS X Applications list, should I decide to keep that warhorse going, which is my current plan. Part of the fun of doing it over the years has been writing the engine for it in my own way. I've mostly done it with a generic Unixy set of tools, so that in principle I could pop it onto a BSD, Linux or Mac server at my whim as circumstances demand.
As it happens, my server has always been on Macs. My independent serving started with a PowerMac 7500 for 3 years, and has been on a PowerMac Cube for about 7 years now. Ever since 1999, it's been on a flavor of Mac OS X. (Currently, I've been toying around with moving to a Mini for the serving, though there's no pressing need to retire the Cube just yet.)
The side of me that has been doing web development since before that phrase existed says not to develop a website in a platform-specific way. The more playful side of me thinks about the fun tricks that I could experiment with by doing Mac-specific tricks. My blog system already makes use of them, and parts of my OS X Pages does too in places.
If this were a site for anyone else, my advice would be to stick with the generic tools. But this site is largely for enjoyment, so I have been letting myself be more playful with its implementation and have yet to regret it. After all, if I haven't used anything but OS X to serve my site for the last 9 years, why should I be thinking that I should worry about some big switch now?
The main problem with my site is the relatively slow DSL service that I can get where I live. It's why most of my webpages are predominantly text. It also forces me to code in a way to optimize bandwidth, but that's a good thing that is ignored by most coders. And, at least so far, my site seems to perform fine when I view it from different places around the world.
Others out there doing Mac-specific web serving, or is the Mac web server presence still too small to get much of a commitment from people yet?
As it happens, my server has always been on Macs. My independent serving started with a PowerMac 7500 for 3 years, and has been on a PowerMac Cube for about 7 years now. Ever since 1999, it's been on a flavor of Mac OS X. (Currently, I've been toying around with moving to a Mini for the serving, though there's no pressing need to retire the Cube just yet.)
The side of me that has been doing web development since before that phrase existed says not to develop a website in a platform-specific way. The more playful side of me thinks about the fun tricks that I could experiment with by doing Mac-specific tricks. My blog system already makes use of them, and parts of my OS X Pages does too in places.
If this were a site for anyone else, my advice would be to stick with the generic tools. But this site is largely for enjoyment, so I have been letting myself be more playful with its implementation and have yet to regret it. After all, if I haven't used anything but OS X to serve my site for the last 9 years, why should I be thinking that I should worry about some big switch now?
The main problem with my site is the relatively slow DSL service that I can get where I live. It's why most of my webpages are predominantly text. It also forces me to code in a way to optimize bandwidth, but that's a good thing that is ignored by most coders. And, at least so far, my site seems to perform fine when I view it from different places around the world.
Others out there doing Mac-specific web serving, or is the Mac web server presence still too small to get much of a commitment from people yet?