426207 - WISHLIST: Have Detailed Transfer Progress Info From old Netscape 3 and 4 Back Again

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, enhancement)

Description

[Norbert Grün]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Build Identifier: 

Dear Madam or Sir!

Ten years ago, I surfed with Netscape 3 and Netscape 4 under S.u.S.E. 4.3
on a 486DX50 with 32MB RAM, 2 × 512MB disk via 14,400 and 28,800 bps
analogue modem.

Especially Netscape 3 was quite informative about what happened on the wire
so you early noticed when it got stuck.

Today the progress bar is as informative as MSIE's, you don't get a hint,
where problems show up.

Only Opera is more informative.

By accident I learned from the Lockergnome archive that cometh with XTEQ's
X-Setup that Netscape can display much more transfer info. The entry of
18th January 1997 says: «Press Ctrl+Alt+T to display the Transfer Status
window.»

I'd like an option to change the behaviour of the progress bar into various
levels of verbosity, up to having a bar with alphanumeric info alongside
for every link encountered and transferred during parsing.

This will give detailed info about what is happening on the wire, where it
is slow or stalled etc.

Back then you could handshake each byte coming down from www.supernews.com
in Netscape's Mail and News reader.

Back then, «diald» allowed a fine-tuned hang-up behaviour for every layer
of the Internet protocol family and coped even with the quirky accounting
of the Deutsche Telekom.

Today, with DSL flat rates this seems obsolete, but it might be good to
confuse Mr. Bad Guy.

Perhaps you can dig out this function in the old sources and reimplement
it.

Kind regards

Norbert Grün ([e-mail])


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Doesn't apply, since wishlist item.
Actual Results:  
Doesn't apply, since wishlist item.

Expected Results:  
Doesn't apply, since wishlist item.

Doesn't apply, since wishlist item.

Comment 1

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

Sorry, but we aren't interested in providing this level of detail in the core product.  It would be a great thing to do in an add-on, however!

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

I think live HTTP headers can do this, but not sure. I know an addon does something like this already.