File size indication
"Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre" <P.Lister@cranfield.ac.uk>
Message-id: <9311241726.AA03235@xdm039.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Cc: ccprl@cranfield.ac.uk
Subject: File size indication
Reply-To: p.lister@cranfield.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 93 17:26:18 GMT
From: "Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre" <P.Lister@cranfield.ac.uk>
Having used the fantastically wonderful piece Mosaic 2.0 for a couple
of days, I am chuffed to bits with being able to URLs before clicking
on them, see the progress of the current transaction.
A really nice devlopment of this would be the ability to see the size
of a file before its pulled in, and whether there are uncached in-lined
images (and their size), whether they're cached, so that I can delay
image loading if it looks like a biggie. To avoid confusing newbies and
wasting time, I'd only want this this info if the file size exceeds a
configurable threshold, and resided off the local network.
During the load, a scale widget (or percentage) indicates how far the
transfer has got. Again, only if the transaction exceeds a threshold size or time.
And, if the file is bigger than I'd expected, the net slower, or
something hangs, the ability to view what I've got so far, while the
net call continues (i.e. I can see the HTML, while the inlined images
are still being dragged over), and stop the call leaving the page so far in view.
Can HTTP 1.0 pass back file sizes? and things like image content? I
haven't been following the spec lately. If so, this would really help
newbies to understand that while WWW is nice and easy, they are still
using real resources, and it's not their local sys admin's fault if
things are a bit slow at times. Anyone else recognise this last sentiment?
Peter Lister Email: p.lister@cranfield.ac.uk
Computer Centre, Cranfield University Voice: +44 234 754200 ext 2828
Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL UK Fax: +44 234 750875
--- Almost (but not quite) entirely unlike tea ---