J C Lawrence wrote:
On Sun, 23 Jan 2000 20:09:16 -0800 Sam Gendler <sgendler@impossible.com> wrote:
It is an unfortunate aspect of human psychology that it feels much slower to wait for a long time and then receive quickly, than it does to just receive the document a little slower, but with less initial latency.
Actually, as IBM extensively researched and documented with their old frame based terminals the reverse is generally true.
Given a screen full of data which arrives, painting across the screen for a total of 10 seconds
or
Given a screen which paints instantly after a 10 second wait during which nothing visually happens other than a possible busy bar
the majority of people will consider the second as far "faster" and "more responsive".
There is however a riding caveat: Web users are trained to be able to do something with partial data, to be able to act _before_ the entire page has been rendered. In the IBM world above, the base assumption was that nothing could be done until the entire data set (the "frame") had been received.
This might be a `<table>' issue. If you generate one or more tables they won't be rendered until all their content is downloaded. In the HTML4.0 reference you will find hints to make it start rendering earlier.(it's just the matter of computing the number of columns and rows) -- CIMPOESU Teodor, Web Programmer @ DIGICOM S.A. Bucharest, Romania @ Internet, site development @ teo@digiro.net , +(401)-330.47.28 official home page ~ http://www.digiro.net/ Internet web page ~ http://internet.digiro.net/