use Perl

The latest set of changes now mean that the site is now heavily reliant on Javascript running in the browser. With the previous updates and the large amount of data on some pages, the Javascript code previously used was taking a considerable amount of time to correctly render the page according to the user preferences. As such a major rethink was instigated and I'm very grateful to JJ, for providing a different perspective that has now been employed. All the data displayed is now driven by data files rather than HTML, thus allowing the pages to render much more quickly. Also to alieviate the loading on distribution pages, the display now only shows one version of a distribution at a time. In most cases this will be the latest version, but depending on your preferences this may differ slightly.

The preferences themselves have been updated and you are now able to filter on Perl verison and operating system, so you can see the reports that are specific for your installation requirements. The preferences are also now tied to the stats and summary graphics, so updating your preferences will also update these tables too.

The latter dynamic update, the summary graphics, now use AJAX to update the quick view of the PASS/FAIL/NA/UNKNOWN reports for the distribution versions or author distributions, depending upon which type of page you are looking at.

This does mean that if you don't have Javascript enabled in your browser then you are unlikely to experience the site as it was meant to be viewed. The next phased released however, will included a graceful downgrade to allow each page to be rendered as a flat HTML page with the ability to submit your choices of preferences via a traditional form. With the Googlebot and MSNbot hitting the site on a regular basis, it's likely that they will be harnessed to rebuild the site in future too. More updates coming soon.