Hello All;
Some totally amazing stuff is coming out of various points in czland
but web page design isn't part of it. :((
I stumbled onto this collection of images from the International Space
Station group. There are at least five real beauties here, although
they are cropped versions of the originals - which I understand are
about four times the size in both X and Y directions.
It's hard to believe that the wacko(s) who assembled the collection
are dumb enuff to think everyone has a T1 connection, but it must be
true - THEY PUT TWO HUNDRED & FIFTY-SEVEN IMAGES ON THE PAGE !!
If you dare to visit:
http://iwebs.upol.cz/iss/galerie_sts98.htm
even *WITH* a T1 connection, don't expect much from Arachne.
She will happily waste your time downloading the thumbnails, and then
just sit there and do NOTHING when finished. I suppose that's better
than crashing. If you surf your cache and ask for an image gallery,
she will have to be poked a few times to start, and then will convert
only a small part of the images in cache.
Arachne 1.62 will convert (on my P90) 98 out of 257, present red boxes
for about 100 more (not counted) and then fill the rest of the page with
the message "Too many images converted" for each of the remaining files.
At this point only about 25% of my available TEMP space on Ramdisk has
been used.
Think I should use a later version ?
I went straight to A1.70r3. I found it much more difficult to prod her
into doing it, but when activated this version would only convert 47
images. Switched to A1.66. I found this version to be a little easier
to bring to life, but I only got 47 images out of 257 here also.
Back to A1.62 (with the .BMPs in TEMP cleared). A recheck confirmed
that A1.62 would do 98 of 257, and only required a manual conversion
of one file to teach her what to do.
Seems A1.62 is the best in this area, but I've run into several pages
lately while on Hollywood patrol with more than 98 images on them.
*
Here's a little comparison for you:
Using Netscape 2.02 on a 33Mhz '486 (NO ramdisk) that page downloaded
in 8 min 36 sec @ 31200 and the screen displayed IMMEDIATELY although
NS cranked the disk for about another minute while it created all the
off-screen images.
Arachne on my *P90* with the same ISP and at the same baudrate took
9 min 21 sec to finish downloading the images and deciding to do no
more. A later experiment with a shortened page indicates she would
have taken almost two minutes more to display the page if she had
been up to it.
As a matter of interest, she will get the page with images OFF
in only 17 seconds.
I've had a little luck downloading with images off, editing the page
into thirds and then selecting one image for display. Arachne will
download the shortened list of images after displaying that image.
- Clarence Verge
- Back to using Arachne V1.62 ....
