CompuServe Messages

Indeed, the web's much cooler if you have a very fast connection, or a browser that's a bit smarter about how it goes onto the web. Add to that the problem of the remote site being part of the limiting factor, and you get…well, you've already gotten the idea of why things are slow. Soooooo…. what to do? Well, first, don't use the default site when you start Amosaic. Either the remote machine is very slow, it has lots of traffic going to it, or *it's* connection is slow. You can start Amosaic up to a different site by adding any URL to the command line, like so: amosiac http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ And that'll connect you to the NCSA's home page. If you want to abort the request, click on the button in the lower right hand corner of Amosaic 1.2, or the dial in the later versions. I believe that should stop the transfer in progress when data is being transferred. It may take a few seconds if you do it during a connect, depending on how things were coded. "Also, why don't Web pages indicate how large a graphic is?" Good question. I think the HTML-3 spec has the ability to specify the image height and width. What good does that do? Well, then your browser can allocate that room on the page, and throw the text up on the screen while your images are being downloaded. Not all browsers support this. I expect if that's not already in Amosaic, it's something they're working on. The size (in bytes) of the image is displayed at the bottom of the window while it's being downloaded. Can you upload that Hotlist program if it's not already here? "What can't the whole page be transmitted at once?" The HTTP protocol doesn't let you do it. I think this was done for a couple of reasons. First, it keeps the HTTP server on the remote site from being to bogged down with parsing every document and figuring out which images to send. That being the case, you have to download the HTML document first, and then the browser on your side can figure out which new pics it needs. In some browsers, images are cached, and therefore don't require retransmission. Some even keep pictures between online sessions. That reall y speeds things up…..if you have a browser that support it. I'd be willing to bet that the Amosaic folks recognize this limitation, and will do something about it. I believe that gopher's available native in later versions of Amosaic. Just type: gopher://gopher.site.here/ (I'm not sure about that tho…I haven't tried it yet). Connect to: http://www.yahoo.com/ And search for keyword ARCHIE for WEB pages that support archie. That's how I use it these days. Steve