the one cool feature: transmission data

[sgipan]

Hi,
so far I couldn't figure out any way to show the transmission data in the status bar (or anywhere else, for that matter), like transmission speed, total file size of page, total/loaded number of images. Is there an extension I missed? Is there any other way to see it? Obviously it was in the original codebase of Netscape, but why has it been taken out? I find it usefull information.
Regards,
sgipan

[Chris Cook]

Hi,
so far I couldn't figure out any way to show the transmission data in the status bar (or anywhere else, for that matter), like transmission speed, total file size of page, total/loaded number of images. Is there an extension I missed? Is there any other way to see it? Obviously it was in the original codebase of Netscape, but why has it been taken out? I find it usefull information.
Regards,
sgipan

Your apparent assumption that Mozilla is based on the "original codebase" of Netscape Navigator is false. It was not taken out because Mozilla/Gecko was created from scratch and is not based on the old navigator.

As for "transmission info", try the "View Page Info" context menu option for some of the details you are looking for, if I understand your query correctly.

[Thumper]

He didn't say Netscape Navigator 4.5, he said "Netscape".

There isn't currently a way to display the details being asked for in the status bar, I'm afraid.

- Chris

[mpthomas]

<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88982">Bug 88982</a>: “Add page load size, speed, and time remaining to status bar”.

Usual disclaimer: DO NOT comment in the bug report unless you are marking duplicates, resolving the bug, providing a patch, or reviewing a patch, or you really really know what you’re doing — otherwise you’ll slow down everyone else’s work. It is not necessary to comment when adding yourself to the CC list.

[sgipan]

<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88982">Bug 88982</a>: “Add page load size, speed, and time remaining to status bar”.

Thanks for pointing me to that bug; that was what I was looking for; voted straight away for it
I did take the liberty to comment, though, since I wanted to clarify why I think it would be a useful feature and maybe this way make it a more relevant feature request. Also I wanted to propose the no. of images to be displayed. Here's what I wrote:

I think it's useful information: If a page takes long time to load, is it because my connection is slow or because the author wrote a crappy 200k+ page?
If I see that my connection speed is slow I know who and how to address the problem. If it's the page's fault I know not to visit it anymore. So it really is useful info. I even like how Opera shows the loaded/total no. of images but I don't know wether there'll be a majority for it.
I don't think that Mozilla/Phoenix are about hiding what's going on under the hood.
- Stephan

PS: Sorry for my technical ignorance, but could this maybe be realized as an extension? So people who want it can install it and the others don't.

Any other comments are welcome, esp. about the option to realize it as an extension.
--sgipan

[jgraham]

<a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88982">Bug 88982</a>: “Add page load size, speed, and time remaining to status bar”.

Thanks for pointing me to that bug; that was what I was looking for; voted straight away for it
I did take the liberty to comment, though, since I wanted to clarify why I think it would be a useful feature and maybe this way make it a more relevant feature request.

Unfortunatley, that is exactly the type of comment that makes bugs difficult to work with. Most developers have a pretty good idea of <em>why</em> something could be useful but don't have the time or inclination to implement it. In any case, it's pretty rare that they'll go 'Oh look, someone else who wants this feature, I better drop what I'm doing and code it'. This type of comment might not look like a problem in a bug with the report, 6 useful comments and a bunch of dupe reports, but some bugs have 150-200 comments which are ~80% people saying 'me too' and 'this is a showstopper for me! I'll use IE until you implement this!'. That can make doing real work in the bug almost impossible. There is a <em>draft</em> set of <a href="http://www.mozilla.org.uk/temp/etiquette.html">bugzilla guidelines</a> adressing exactly this sort of issue (please note, that really is a draft and may not live at that <acronym title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</acronym> forever).

Please don't be offended - I'm not trying to attack you personally - I have probably left some pretty innane bugzilla comments before. But you start to realise that it doesn't help anyone (and severely <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/bz/archives/002499.html" title="bzbarsky's weblog entry">annoys many developers</a>). The best tatic, unless you have something constructive to add (the offer of help, the location of a problem, a testcase, a sutiable workaround, further conditions to reproduce the bug, something that is important to consider when implementing the feature, etc.), is to vote or add yourself to the cc list (then you'll see how much attention you pay to someone else saying that they need the feature compared to, say, technical discussion that will lead to a fix) but to <em>resist all temptation to comment</em>.


As for this particular issue - it is, of course, possible for someone to implement this as an extension (although I guess some core networking code changes might be needed, having said which the download manager already has this information). The problem is finding that someone. Maybe you should look at what the download manager does and see if you can use the same methodology in the status bar (I have no idea if that will work or not).

[sgipan]

Unfortunatley, that is exactly the type of comment that makes bugs difficult to work with. Most developers have a pretty good idea of <em>why</em> something could be useful but don't have the time or inclination to implement it. In any case, it's pretty rare that they'll go 'Oh look, someone else who wants this feature, I better drop what I'm doing and code it'. This type of comment might not look like a problem in a bug with the report, 6 useful comments and a bunch of dupe reports, but some bugs have 150-200 comments which are ~80% people saying 'me too' and 'this is a showstopper for me! I'll use IE until you implement this!'. That can make doing real work in the bug almost impossible. There is a <em>draft</em> set of <a href="http://www.mozilla.org.uk/temp/etiquette.html">bugzilla guidelines</a> adressing exactly this sort of issue (please note, that really is a draft and may not live at that <acronym title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</acronym> forever).

Please don't be offended - I'm not trying to attack you personally - I have probably left some pretty innane bugzilla comments before. But you start to realise that it doesn't help anyone (and severely <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/bz/archives/002499.html" title="bzbarsky's weblog entry">annoys many developers</a>). The best tatic, unless you have something constructive to add (the offer of help, the location of a problem, a testcase, a sutiable workaround, further conditions to reproduce the bug, something that is important to consider when implementing the feature, etc.), is to vote or add yourself to the cc list (then you'll see how much attention you pay to someone else saying that they need the feature compared to, say, technical discussion that will lead to a fix) but to <em>resist all temptation to comment</em>.


As for this particular issue - it is, of course, possible for someone to implement this as an extension (although I guess some core networking code changes might be needed, having said which the download manager already has this information). The problem is finding that someone. Maybe you should look at what the download manager does and see if you can use the same methodology in the status bar (I have no idea if that will work or not).

OK, thanks for that aclaration. No problem here. In that case my only real contribution was to add the loaded/total images idea to the request.
However, since I don't have the slightest idea about programming I might post the idea in the extensions forum and see if there's someone interested in implementing it. It looks like there's quite a few users interested in this anyways...
-- Stephan

[sgipan]

Hi, this is just to let you know that I posted an extension request at

http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7457

Feel free to support it

-- sgipan