On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, Simon Josefsson wrote: > 27b * 10000 = 270kb. Ouch!
On a 56KB modem at an effective rate of, say, 28K, that would be about a minute and 15 seconds. So you may not want to do that all at once. Of course, on a broadband or better line, 270KB is not significant at all. So, here comes another patentable idea that I'm giving away for free into the public domain: Don't fetch everything. At least, not at once. Do lazy fetching instead. Given sequence/UID mapping, you know how many messages are before or after any particular range. Fetch just enough information to draw the data which is visible on the screen. You have enough to size and draw the scrollbars, but don't fetch the information for what is off screen. Either fetch on demand when the user scrolls, or fetch in the background while the user is looking at what's on the screen now. That way, the user thinks that it's all happening very quickly, even if you end up fetching a lot of data. I never cease to be amazed at the number of clients which do FETCH 1:* BODY[HEADER] ... -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
