I just fail to see what an applet gains that can't be done with an XMLHttpRequest and a properly written webpage. This is a file that's going to be downloading over minutes/hours. We don't exactly need up to the second status updates, and even if we did, we can do that purely in the browser.
There's UI tricks you could do to make it less difficult to check, if you really wanted to go that route. You could have a fproxy option to append a frame onto the side/top of all pages, similiar to the GoogleCache frame. I'm note sure of the feasibility, but couldn't the you feed one or two bits / second to the download, just enough to make it not time out? That way, when I click a link in fproxy, it starts a download, in my browser's exsiting download manager. Freenet continues to feed one or two bits of garbage/whitespace/whatever to the download every few seconds, to prevent a time out. From my perspective, it would look like any other download, just take a long time. When freenet internally finished downloading the file, it can just give the rest of the bits to the browser, which thinkgs it's been downloading the whole time. These are just examples, and not very good ones at that. But there's a lot of things that /could/ be done to make it feel like it belongs in a browser. Just a few random thoughts, Colin Matthew Toseland wrote: >Well, the more paranoid will certainly disable applet support in their >browsers... > >On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 05:32:50PM +0300, Constantine Dokolas wrote: > > >>Ian Clarke wrote: >> >> >>>The correct solution is using a "Freenet aware" third-party client that >>>doesn't require us to hammer the square peg of a Freenet download, into >>>the round hole of a web browser. The "web metaphor" is all very well >>>when it is appropriate, but in the case of the download of large files >>> >>> >>>from Freenet, it simply isn't. Better to do it properly than to impose >> >> >>>an inappropriate metaphor where it doesn't belong. >>> >>> >>I've been following this thread, but I still don't see why the download >>progress page can't be handled by a simple (which may be an understatement) >>applet. I haven't heard anybody mention that possibility yet and I don't >>know why everybody is stuck in the HTML-or-full-blown-client way of >>thinking. >> >>Doc >> >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Devl mailing list >>Devl at freenetproject.org >>http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl >>
