Re: HTML icon set was: Additions to the CGI archive

hoesel@chem.rug.nl (frans van hoesel)
From: hoesel@chem.rug.nl (frans van hoesel)
Message-id: <9401061702.AA00941@Xtreme>
Subject: Re: HTML icon set was: Additions to the CGI archive
To: nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 1994 18:02:12 +0100 (MET)
Cc: www-talk@dxcern.cern.ch
In-reply-to: <26782.9401061306@cblelca.cbl.leeds.ac.uk> from "nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk" at Jan 6, 94 01:06:46 pm
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> 
> >> in the next release of NCSA httpd the directory indexing will be overhauled
> >> and with that a default icons directory of/icons/ will be included in the
> >> standard distribution.
> >
> >But then they still need to be transferred. I would prefer to see a set
> >of magic URL's specified in the HTML+ spec for a number of images such as
> >folder, menu, file, bin file, text file etc. 
> >
> 
> Apart from images such as those above which are used in documents
> that are generated on the fly, there are a lot of other images
> which are used as navigation icons in authored or converted documents,
> e.g. next page, previous page, up group, index, contents, information/help,
> home page, get code, mail author, audio link, movie link, etc.
> 
> In some cases these icons are well designed (e.g. GNN) but for those 
> of us lacking artistic flair it would be better to have a set of 
> standard icons that could also become part of the HTML+ spec. 
> 
> This will reduce the amount of traffic and give a more consistent look
> and feel to HTML documents. Of course nobody will be obliged to use them.
> 
> So if anyone is designing an HTML icon set (is anyone doing that?)
> I think it would be a good idea to consider this larger set.
> 
 why not forget about the icons completly and make a much more flexible
way for storing images like icons on a local disk. perhaps a kind of
URL cache implemented in the browser. but then the permanent type of
cache: simply a list of URL of wich the contents can be found on
local disk.
as an example
say I want to retrieve the EXPO ticket_office.html it contains an URL for
the inlined bitmap. let the browser look up this URL in its local table; if
it finds it there, then use the local version; if it doesn't find it there
simply retrieve it anyway. People will need to store there most popular
images by hand into the local disksystem (a sysadmin would do that for you)
or some smarter interface fo storing them.

nothing realy special is needed, and you don't depend on somebody's choice
of what would be an often needed icon. I formyself almost never see the
file icon, but I could include GNN's icons.

-frans