Re: DFI: Proposal to add activelink images -- feedback wanted

On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 01:15:41PM +0000, Matthew Toseland wrote:
> I rather like YoYo's approach, with alinks for everything but a separate
> page for each category. Of course this isn't ideal, as you always have
> to worry about New/Updated, if you use it.
> 
> One other suggestion: Would it be hard to run it dual-format? Have the
> whole set of pages both with and without alinks?
> 
> Just my 2p. Feel free to completely ignore, I do not speak for the
> project.

Somebody suggested that I do speak for the project. Let me just make
this clear: In this email, I am not intending to make any threats. :)
> 
> On Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 04:38:42PM -0600, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> > I just added the following to the "News" section on DFI today, but
> > thought I'd also go ahead and post it here, too, in the hope of
> > generating more feedback:
> > 
> > Feb 13, 2005:  Calling all freeneters!  Your feedback is needed!
> >  
> > I'm currently in the process of doing some fairly extensive revisions
> > to the spider used to generate both DFI's database of site links as well
> > as the actual HTML code for the site itself.  Perhaps the biggest and
> > most important idea under consideration (which I'm leaning rather
> > strongly in favor of, myself) is the addition of support for activelink
> > images.  I'd like to know how you would feel about such a change, and
> > I'll explain my own views on the matter right here, right now.  
> > 
> > The payoff, it seems to me, would be quite substantial, and the
> > drawbacks, if any, quite minimal in comparison.  For a trivial amount of
> > additional code in the spider itself, and in the HTML code for DFI, we
> > would be reaping some fairly significant benefits.  
> > 
> > Not only would the images lend a great deal more visual appeal to DFI
> > (something it is sorely lacking in at present), but more importantly,
> > they would also assist in the propagation of each site's metadata (which
> > is what activelinks were originally designed to do, by the way, in case
> > you didn't already know), thus helping to improve "the freenet
> > experience" for everyone.  Your node would be fetching and saving sites'
> > metadata in your local datastore for future reference, while also
> > improving its routing capabilities in the process, a big win for
> > everybody no matter how you look at it.  
> > 
> > The only real drawbacks, as far as I can see, would be a slight
> > increase in the size of the HTML code (pretty much a moot issue, as
> > DFI's index.html is compressed and stored in a zipped container file
> > anyway) and longer time for the entire index page to render completely
> > (due to the fact that your browser would actually be fetching the images
> > in realtime each time you load DFI).  
> > 
> > Bear in mind that we're only talking about adding a line or two of HTML
> > code that references an image, not embedding the actual image itself in
> > the page, so it's not like we'd be adding a whole lot of additional data
> > per site.  Also, the presence or absence of a given site's image would
> > serve as a pretty good realtime indicator of the likelihood of it being
> > successfully retrieved (a concept you're no doubt already familiar with
> > from using The Freedom Engine).  
> > 
> > In addition, you would still be able to browse through the index,
> > reading sites' info, right-clicking on links to open them in a separate
> > tab or window, etc., while any remaining images were still being
> > fetched, so the overall usability of the index would not be impaired in
> > any way by this.  The main body of the index would still be rendered as
> > quickly as possible by your browser, while the activelink images would
> > be fetched and rendered asynchronously.  
> > 
> > Your thoughts on this idea would be greatly appreciated.  Please use
> > the feedback link on the DFI navigator to send me your opinion.  
> > 
> > Thank you! 
> >  
> > -- dolphin
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> 
> -- 
> Matthew J Toseland - toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]
> Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
> ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.



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-- 
Matthew J Toseland - toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]
Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.

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