Task Four: Interruption of Page/Image Loading

Netscape 7

In order to stop loading of a page in Netscape, the user just presses the big red button in the menu bar. This automatically stops loading of all HTML source and in-line multimedia. This method is quick, simple, but limited in flexibility with it's all-or-nothing approach to stopping.

Mosaic 3

Mosaic is lacking in the ability to stop all transfers at once. When the user presses the stop transfer button, sometimes it will stop one thing (ie. an image) from loading, but sometimes it has no effect. Other times, it will just crash the program.

Lynx 1

This is not possible with Lynx. If the user found himself in a situation where it was necessary to quickly abort a HTTP transfer, he would have to resort to Control-C, which would terminate the download (and the application, unfortunately). But with Lynx's lightening-fast transfers, why would anyone ever need to cancel?

OmniWeb 10

OmniWeb offers the user a suite of choices to abort transfers. There is a main cancel button in the top right corner of the window, which aborts the transfer of all images and HTML code. However, if the user wants to continue downloading some images or the HTML, she may click on any loading image and it will stop loading. This can be repeated as many times as desired. If, at some later point, the aborted images are wanted, they can be retrieved by clicking on the appropriate placeholder icons. This system of selective abortions has proved to be quite convenient, although many right-to-load advocates have strongly voiced their opposition.


The Winner Is:

OmniWeb