Re: Dynamic HTML documents with client pull

>I was looking at Web page yesterday, when Netscape (1.1 mac) suddenly
>started to download a new page by itself. I thougth that I had clicked on a
>link by mistake, but this repeated several times without my intervention.
>Very annoying, because I hadn't time to read the first page before the
>second came.
>
>Today again, when I looked at interesting web page, Netscape started to
>download an audio file and started talking to me. Cute, but very annoying,
>as it did it over and over again, every time I had resized the Netscape
>window (over the slow Atlantic link USA->Sweden). If I wanted to get to a
>new page I first had to check the dialog "stop dowload" to get there.
>
>I had to take a look at the HTML source to find out what this was, and I
>found a new HTML directive looking something like this:
>
><META HTTP-EQUIV=REFRESH CONTENT="20; URL=http://[file name].au">

I connected to Netscape's server to see if this was true (or documented).
It is both (http://home.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/dynamic_docs.html).
In the words of the documentation: "the content creator has total control".

Presumably that means control of what gets downloaded to the user. I wish
it meant that they also had control over themselves. Perhaps a little
control should be put back in the users hands, e.g., a preference which
would alert them to, or disable "dynamic documents."

The postive uses of this (e.g. real dynamic data) will be great. The
negative...this will change surfing the net, that's for sure.

Bill


Bill Trefzger
Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
703-274-7661 x60
<http://www.dtic.dla.mil/staff/trefzger/>
wtrefzge@dtic.dla.mil

Received on Friday, 28 April 1995 07:25:53 UTC