Some news on the TOC
So, we got our first proof of concept on the Table of Contents, and the fix that the devs will be building into Xena 3.0 for rendering times. Over a 56K modem we were able to render the top 2 levels (about 150 items) in less than five seconds in India. That is, we dialed in from Redmond and hit a test server in Hyderabad and got that performance level. So, it looks like we'll be able to meet that project goal. The basic approach at this point will be to chunk the TOC and just render the first two levels on initial page view, then get subsequent layers in sets of two as well. That is, when you hit the site you'd get Platforms | Windows XP, then after opening the WinXP folder you'd get Windows XP Professional | Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2, and so on in groups of 2. Because the major chunks will get pre-built and cached the render time should be less than 5 seconds (in most cases way less) for just about all subscribers. It's pretty cool, actually.