- From: Abigail <abigail@tungsten.gn.iaf.nl>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 1996 03:43:23 +0100 (MET)
- To: www-html@w3.org
Brian Behlendorf wrote: ++ ++ On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, Ian Burrell wrote: ++ > I was thinking recently that a SIZE attribute that indicated the ++ > physical size in bytes of an included object would be a useful ++ > addition to HTML. ++ ... ++ > Although the HTTP protocol ++ > gives the size in the header, this requires a network connection. ++ ++ Which doesn't really penalize you if it's done right. Consider the news ++ reader "trn" - it was designed to minimize the amount of wait-time by ++ getting information from the news server in the background while you read ++ posts or pick threads from a menu. In the same way, the meta-information ++ (size, content-type variants, etc) about a linked object can be obtained ++ after the page has been loaded and rendered, but before a subsequent link ++ is followed. ++ ++ As for using this to base decisions on inlining objects - the current ++ netscape model of opening a bunch of parallel connections could handle ++ the benefits you see this providing already. With the addition of ++ HTTP/1.1, a client could fetch the page, do a HEAD on each inlined ++ object, and then fecth them in whatever order it prefers, all over the ++ same TCP connection. It gets even better with HTTP-NG, when the server ++ can send to the browser information the browser wasn't even aware it ++ needed yet, like metainformation about inlined objects. Ouch. trn is usually done over a local network, that doesn't really hurt. But doing a request for each linke, even if it is only a HEAD one, means a lot more traffic over the net. There are pages with hundreds of links (all those people with their bookmarks files on line), I even have a page with over 1000 links.... I agree that your suggestion would be the proper way to do it, as the refering document does not have to store information about the refered document. However, I am afraid the current state of technology is not good enough to do it without paying a heavy price. Abigail
Received on Tuesday, 9 January 1996 21:43:30 UTC