[Zope] When does http reponse begin to be sent.

[J C Lawrence]

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.

-- 
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--