Not a bug Alert bar doesn't appear in time

[Ahmed Saleh]

Hello ,
i want to report small issue in the Alerts feature and i'm not sure if some one reported it before .

when for example some one like my post the alert bar which in the bottom corner should alert me in same time but it doesn't , it does just when i make any changes on the page without refresh like rollover on Inbox tab or Alerts Tab , then the alert bar works and in same time the alert tab .

you can try it !

 

[Jeremy P]

This isn't a bug, by design to not increase server load, conversations and alerts are not checked. They are just included with any other AJAX requests. I think they are checked on window focus though, at least they seem to be for me.

Anyways, still fair game since it's in the suggestions forum. I personally use an addon for this:
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/live-updates.274/

 

[Ahmed Saleh]

So can they make it by choice ? if i want to enable / disable instant alerts .

thanks a lot

 

[Arty]

Instant alerts are not possible. Your browser is not connected to server all the time using some custom protocol that would allow server to send you instant notification. It connects via HTTP, requests document, disconnects.

The only way to get close to instant notifications is to connect to server every few seconds and request status update. That means validating session and checking status on each request. If one user would do it, it probably wouldn't be a problem, but when several users would do that, it would skyrocket resource usage on server.

It is not a good idea.

 

[Jeremy P]

FWIW the addon has not caused any visible change on resource usage for me, which I monitor with graphs.
The forum I run isn't that big but decent, ~40 members online most of the time.

Maybe I'm out of the loop but I'm not sure where people have actually put this to the test at all, I'm not entirely sure if it would cause major performance problems. If I ran a big enough site I'd go with a VPS cluster anyways, scale your server to your needs and all. It would only be for logged in members who have your site open, and even on a huge site I'd expect their servers could cope with an extra couple hundred requests a minute.