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Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

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Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#31

Post by raja »

dgreensp wrote: post #16
mcgwiz wrote: post #9

Their technique for generating the HTML representation of deep-link into a Meteor app is to run the entire client app in a headless browser and serialize the generated DOM?! This is an area of vital importance to public, JS-based RIAs, and needs some real innovation. Why even bother delivering this half-baked solution? The processing cost makes it untenable for all but the tiniest of URL-spaces.

Yeah, it's definitely the kind of solution that makes you twitch a bit. The reason we wrote it is because we needed it now for meteor.com, and it wasn't too much engineering work (I think Nick wrote the first version over a weekend, and then it was a couple days of packaging it up). The reason we released it is, well, why not? :) The "real solution" is coming, and we will get it right. It's connected to URL routing,…

Did you look into using Zombie instead of PhantomJS? It advertises itself as a tool for headless full stack testing utility but I have come to rely on it for integrating headless browsing in node.js apps.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#32

Post by mortice »

mnutt wrote: post #26
jcoglan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind the cost. They are proposing that you run your app, with its 3rd-party jquery/facebook/twitter/google code loaded dynamically over non-SSL connections on a platform with filesystem-write-access to your server.

It's no less safe than loading hostile 3rd-party web pages on your browser at home.

You are so wrong that you are dangerous.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#33

Post by jcoglan »

mnutt wrote: post #26
jcoglan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind the cost. They are proposing that you run your app, with its 3rd-party jquery/facebook/twitter/google code loaded dynamically over non-SSL connections on a platform with filesystem-write-access to your server.

It's no less safe than loading hostile 3rd-party web pages on your browser at home.

It is much less safe. PhantomJS has a filesystem API, which is fine when you consider that its primary use case is testing code you wrote and reporting the results. However, given that it is fairly easy to create a bridge between the PhantomJS and WebKit JavaScript runtimes, or to exploit common patterns for making such a bridge, running arbitrary 3rd-party code, loaded over a connection not verified by an SSL cert chain, is asking for trouble. This is an obvious backdoor to get write access to Meteor servers.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#34

Post by enos_feedler »

raja wrote: post #31
dgreensp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's definitely the kind of solution that makes you twitch a bit. The reason we wrote it is because we needed it now for meteor.com, and it wasn't too much engineering work (I think Nick wrote the first version over a weekend, and then it was a couple days of packaging it up). The reason we released it is, well, why not? :) The "real solution" is coming, and we will get it right. It's connected to URL routing,…

Did you look into using Zombie instead of PhantomJS? It advertises itself as a tool for headless full stack testing utility but I have come to rely on it for integrating headless browsing in node.js apps.

+1 for Zombie. I have been using it for acceptance testing with mocha and it works quite well for emulating the browser environment. The nice thing is its just an npm module that you can require and works within the js environment.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#35

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

raja wrote: post #31
dgreensp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's definitely the kind of solution that makes you twitch a bit. The reason we wrote it is because we needed it now for meteor.com, and it wasn't too much engineering work (I think Nick wrote the first version over a weekend, and then it was a couple days of packaging it up). The reason we released it is, well, why not? :) The "real solution" is coming, and we will get it right. It's connected to URL routing,…

Did you look into using Zombie instead of PhantomJS? It advertises itself as a tool for headless full stack testing utility but I have come to rely on it for integrating headless browsing in node.js apps.

Not affiliated with meteor but I have a similar setup.

I have tried zombie but there were various issues with getting it to work. Phantomjs was just much more painless.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#36

Post by csallen »

gaius wrote: post #30
geoffschmidt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why even bother delivering this half-baked solution? Because we used it for our funding announcement at the end of last month -- a full press cycle, where the Andreessen Horowitz and Matrix Partners press machine pushed our story out to all of the tech blogs, with all of the traffic that that implies -- and not only did it work fine, it got us to #1 on Google for "meteor." Above, you know, actual meteors :) It work…

Above, you know, actual meteors :) Elegant proof if any were needed that so-called SEO is merely tricks for polluting search indexes. As bad as spammers.

Search engines are all about what people are looking for on the web. It's quite possible that more people are currently interested in Meteor the framework than meteors the objects, in which case I wouldn't call this result "pollution."

If you really want the Wikipedia page for meteors, nothing's stopping you from going straight there.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#37

Post by besquared »

dgreensp wrote: post #16
mcgwiz wrote: post #9

Their technique for generating the HTML representation of deep-link into a Meteor app is to run the entire client app in a headless browser and serialize the generated DOM?! This is an area of vital importance to public, JS-based RIAs, and needs some real innovation. Why even bother delivering this half-baked solution? The processing cost makes it untenable for all but the tiniest of URL-spaces.

Yeah, it's definitely the kind of solution that makes you twitch a bit. The reason we wrote it is because we needed it now for meteor.com, and it wasn't too much engineering work (I think Nick wrote the first version over a weekend, and then it was a couple days of packaging it up). The reason we released it is, well, why not? :) The "real solution" is coming, and we will get it right. It's connected to URL routing,…

Did you guys think about just building a normal website?

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#38

Post by mnutt »

mortice wrote: post #32
mnutt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no less safe than loading hostile 3rd-party web pages on your browser at home.

You are so wrong that you are dangerous.

No, I'm not.

I think people's confusion lies in the fact that there are actually two separate areas where javascript is run in Phantom: one is the javascript that controls Phantom and has a filesystem API; the other is the javascript that gets run inside the browser sandbox as part of the web page, just like any other javascript run in any other browser. It is possible to set up a bridge between the two such that the latter can issue commands to the former, just as you can curl sites and pipe them into bash. The point is that with default settings you can use PhantomJS to load a website without any danger whatsoever.

If you disagree, please write a more worthwhile comment showing me which part of the API is dangerous.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#39

Post by libria »

gaius wrote: post #30
geoffschmidt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why even bother delivering this half-baked solution? Because we used it for our funding announcement at the end of last month -- a full press cycle, where the Andreessen Horowitz and Matrix Partners press machine pushed our story out to all of the tech blogs, with all of the traffic that that implies -- and not only did it work fine, it got us to #1 on Google for "meteor." Above, you know, actual meteors :) It work…

Above, you know, actual meteors :) Elegant proof if any were needed that so-called SEO is merely tricks for polluting search indexes. As bad as spammers.

My top 2 hits were meteor.com and meteor.ie (a mobile communications provider in Ireland) and then space debris. It would seem domain names have a lot of SEO weight, an important takeaway for startups.

Re: Meteor 0.3.9 adds search engine optimization

#40

Post by spullara »

If they can tell which pages are public vs private (which I think they can) they could just tell the client that they need a copy of the page when they are done rendering it, have it post the serialized DOM back to the server and then cache and serve that until the next redeploy.
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