mikeaag

Not sure if this is the kind of thing you're talking about, but the big cloud providers offer a host of AI/ML APIs for a range of different things.

For example: https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/ai-services/ https://cloud.google.com/products/ai

Hi Nevi-me

I've come across Socket.io before, and played around with pusher as well. And if i remember correctly, Laravel has built in helpers for sending websocket messages.

My main issue is actually running the node.js application, as its something i've not done before. That was another reason for not using websockets. Wanted to remove as many barriers that might slow us down or stop us from launching, so we stuck with what we knew.

I'm sure i'll update this at some point to use websockets though, gotta learn how to deploy node.js sites at some point :D

The benefit of using websockets is that each user's browser doesnt need to constantly be requesting the number of users from our server. If the number of users on the site hasnt changed, then with AJAX polling, its a wasted request. But with websockets there is no waste, the client gets pushed the updates when they happen from the server.

Having said all that, with the number of requests that we're getting at the moment, i dont think it makes much of a difference. Though im guessing if we got a lot more traffic, then websockets would probably reduce our server load.

Hey shujito, It's built with PHP using Laravel. And the Database is MariaDB.

Let me know if theres anything else you'd like to know

Hey subie,

I'm one of the creators of Real Time Users.

Only 1 AJAX call get sent to 'track' you on the site for each page load. The AJAX calls you're seeing are asking the server for the latest number of users on the site so that we can update the value displayed.

This isnt the most efficient way of doing this, as if the site has a low number of users, the count will return the same number most of the time. A better way would be to use websockets, however i only have limited knowledge of using websockets so we decided it was best to just stick to the tech we knew (Especially as we built it in a weekend).

If people start using this more, we might update it to use websockets though.

Hope that answers your questions. Let me know if theres anything else you'd like to know.

Feel free to take a look at mine - https://myyear.co/@mikeaag/2015 :D

Hey all, I'm Mike, one of the guys behind The Working Lunch.

We created The Working Lunch to help startup founders make the most out of their lunchtimes. Every week day, we post up a short list of articles/podcasts/videos that founders will find useful. More info here - http://wearecontrast.com/2015/08/month-6-introducing-the-wor...

Would love to hear any feedback or suggestions you might have.

Cheers, Mike

Thanks for the notes, will definitely take them on board. Auto-submit is probably going to be the first feature that gets added. I currently have a separate bookmarklet for it, but it's much easier if it's just part of the generated bookmarklet.

Hey, thanks for the comment.

I find it crazy that you created that 9 years ago!

FormFiller doesn't currently support auto filling the form with data, but it's definitely something i've considered for the future. I've saved that post and will give it another read when I get around to adding that functionality in.

Cheers, Mike

I'll be honest, once I decided I needed a solution, and that browser extensions weren't an option, I didn't really try that hard to find a bookmark alternative as I figured I could create something to do the job fairly quickly.

The first version of FormFiller was written in about 30 minutes over the course of 2 lunch breaks and it did what I needed it to (though not very elegantly. It send the generated JS bookmark code to a php script which saved it to a file which was then loaded in the created bookmarklet. Caused issues with https though :( )

Also, because I originally made it for use at my day job, there were some special use cases that I hard coded in.

Once I'd got to that point, the thought of looking for existing solutions didn't cross my mind.

Now, to answer your question, having looked at the project you linked, I would say that there are only a few differences (at the moment).

1) While they are both open source, FormFiller is on GitHub and therefore I feel it's a bit easier for people to access the source code and potentially contribute.

2) The FormFiller save bookmarklet loads the code from https://rawgit.com/wearecontrast/FormFiller/master/src/FormF.... What this means is that when I update FormFiller with new features, everyone gets upgraded without having to create a new Save bookmarklet. (This doesn't update the generated bookmarklets though. Anyone wanted to take advantage of a new feature can just use their current bookmarklet to populate the form, then save again using the automatically updated Save bookmarklet. The benefit of this is, if your generated bookmarklet works now, it will always work regardless of any features added/removed in the future)

3) When you click the FormFiller bookmark to save a form, you are presented with a modal window. Currently, the only thing you can do on this window is change the name of the link (and thus the name of your bookmark). The plan going forward is to re-implement some of the functionality I need at work. This means being able to select certain fields to have random values inserted, and also having fields have calculated values inserted. for example, random characters in the name fields, and always inserting the current date (or +3 days) into a date field.

4) The only other difference I could see was that FormFiller does not split up the generated bookmarklets for multiple forms on the page. I'm not sure if this is better or worse though?

Thanks for the comment and I hope that gives a bit of insight into where I'm planning on taking FormFiller. If you end up giving FormFiller a try then feedback is always appreciated :D

Cheers, Mike

They are indeed similar, but work a little differently. One of the main requirements I had when making FormFiller was it needed to be cross browser. The reason for this is that at work I have to use Firefox, and our testers prefer IE, but at home I use chrome. I wanted to create something which I could use on any browser, so unfortunately browser extensions were out of the question :(

Lazarus does look interesting though.

HAHA yes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5UbCRrlmlE

Hey all,

I'm Mike, one of the guys behind FormFiller.

We made FormFiller to scratch our own itch, but thought others might find some use out of it as well. (You can read more about how it came about at http://wearecontrast.com/2015/07/month-5-introducing-formfil...)

Would love to hear your feedback on how we can make it better.

Cheers, Mike :D

Hey,

Mike here from CONTRAST. Would love to hear your thoughts on the post, and if theres any tools you use that are worth checking out.

Cheers,

Thanks for your feedback.

We went for the path of least resistance, but i totally get what you're saying. We'll definitely look at adding in as an option as soon as possible.

Morning all,

One half of CONTRAST here, the guys behind OutstandingBar.

We would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on OutstandingBar.

Mike

hey acmecorps, glad you to hear you're planning to use HowsItGoin. We don't have emails implemented currently, but they are at the top of our to-do list. You can keep up-to-date with our progress at https://twitter.com/wecontrast :D