Sunday, 19th February 2012
Why does Twitter use a hashbang instead of using the History API?
I asked a friend who is an engineer there about this a while ago. When they shipped the first version of Twitter that used fully Ajax driven pages there was a critical bug with pushState in a widely deployed version of Safari, which made it impractical to commit to.
[... 67 words]What web programming framework best supports ’drag and drop’ actions? Please give examples of sites and/or plug-ins that support the interaction.
Drag and drop is a client-side thing—it has nothing to do with the server-side technology being used.
[... 72 words]Why did Twitter have so many problems if it is made with Ruby?
The technical problem Twitter solves (distributing millions of short messages per minute to an enormous graph of follow relationships) is extremely hard in any language.
[... 44 words]Is it reasonably safe to visit Ethiopia and then to fly from Ethiopia back home via Cairo?
If you’re specifically interested in the Cairo leg then yes, it’s safe. Cairo is a modern city if over 20 million people. Tourism is Egypt’s most important industry and they are very, very good at protecting that cash cow even during times of political turmoil. If you pay attention to the news and don’t go actively looking for street riots to get involved with you’ll be fine.
[... 90 words]