On Friday 25 July 2003 05:50 pm, Gordan wrote: > As far as I can see, pre-caching would achieve precisely the same thing if > done properly. Manual pre-caching methods already exist, but an automated > one would probably be a better solution in the longer term, if tuned > properly. I must say that I find the iframe and img tag pre-caching cludge > engineeringly repulsive, too, but at least it is not polluting the node > code.
WHAT!? No, pre-caching can NEVER be the same as, or better than a container. If you are pre-caching, you have to get the main page first. (BEFORE you can START downloading the subpages.) with a container you get them at the same time. Take the following example: You goto a site. It has 3 big pages and 4 small ones. The big pages are twice as large as the small ones. The user views 2 of the big pages and one of the small ones. The HTML zip compresses 3 to 1. So the user can view all the HTML as soon as the main page is available. The site takes a total of 10 units of space, of which the user is interested in 5. So the user downloads a 3-4 unit zip file. This is not only much faster than pre-caching it uses much less bandwidth (even less than with no containers). If the user was only interested in the text of the main page, then they download 3 units instead of 2. No big deal, the time to request the file far outways the cost of it being 50% bigger. Then with images even if it doesn't compress at all, if it is done right, you should almost never get any images in the archive that you would not have gotten anyway. This is far more beneficial because it allows themes etc. which can be shared between sites. So if it is done RIGHT zips are a good idea. Now please explain to why pre-fetching is better in any circomstance then an automated system using zips that is implemented correctly. I think we should get rid of pre-caching alltogether, unless you are talking about putting it in the node manifest to list which images will be loaded by which HTML files. This is a good idea. It would work well with archives, because it would allow fproxy to tell if a site is abusing archives as soon as it sees the manifest. Tossing up a big fat warning, or refusing to load the site without the user explicitly clicking OK should discourage site owners from doing this. _______________________________________________ devl mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hawk.freenetproject.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
