I tested it with inline GIFs in Netscape, and that works, at least. I'm
waiting on Webspace for Win 3.1 to see if it works with that.
I think it's a bit impractical in the long run, though. If
>nothing else, I have *no* desire to *require* people to have a CD of
>standard objects (I think that's unlikely to fly) -- rather, it would
>be nice to have a mechanism flexible enough so that if the user *has*
>such a thing, it can boost their performance.
I agree. This is nothing but a complete kludge to try to make 1.0
usable *now* over tight bandwidth. But I'm tired of waiting, so I'm
trying to think of whatever I can to make things work with what's here
now. I hope this will only be a temporary distraction from making
things work better in the future.
Take the CGI option I was proposing: there's no reason it
couldn't use either a user's local file (if path is specified) or
a remote server file (if the user doesn't have the library). That
way anyone can use it, but if you download the library, you can
use it faster.
>I think flexibility is essential, though. If we go assuming much about
>the user's setup, we're likely to fall on our faces. Ideally, we should
>have some mechanism that permits a smart browser to get kick-ass
>performance, but doesn't interfere with a dumber one getting the job
>done.
While running every hit through a CGI script is a pretty ugly
solution, it's at least flexible for the end user.
I'll try to put up a proof-of-concept URL in the next few days to
show people what I mean by all this.
--Andy
http://www.texas.net/users/andyn