OW: images w/o extensions

[James Christopher Phillips]

Hi folks:

I've noticed one little problem with OmniWeb that doesn't occur with Mosaic but  
can be annoying.  The example I have is the Dilbert comic strips available to  
people in the uiuc.edu hierarchy.

When I double-click on a particular comic, the save box comes up and lists  
"read-comics?50" or something like that as the name of the file.  In Mosaic  
under X I believe the file is saved under a unique name and xv (a viewer) opens  
it no problem.  What I find with OmniWeb is that if I just hit OK then Edit  
opens the file as text.  If I put ANY graphics extension on, however, then it  
opens in OmniImage perfectly.  I've tried .gif, .tif, and .jpeg and it doesn't  
matter.  When OW can open an image like this without the save dialog this could  
be a serious problem as I won't be able to tell it to tack on the extension.

Aside from that it works very well and I'm quite impressed.  The other  
improvements I would suggest are:

- Make the history and browser resizable.  In fact, I often miss not seeing an  
entire page at once and wish they weren't there.  In order to keep the same  
functionality, however, there are a couple ways that they could be hidden but  
readily accessible.  First, the function of the history menu and probably the  
two most recent browsers (maybe more) could be served by two pop-up menus.   
Click on "History" and a menu pops up.  Click on "Browser" and a grid pops up.   
Second, a toggle switch would allow you to pop up the history/browser panel  
without going into preferences and hide it again after making a selection.  I  
wouldn't put it in a second window, however, just pop it in and out.

- Save files in /tmp under unique names and automatically trash them when done.   
If you want to put a file someplace then you should be able to  
command-double-click (or select then save-selection or something similar)  
whatever you clicked to see the file in order to bring up a save dialog.  Of  
course, the file from should just be copied if already loaded.

- Buttons should act like buttons...they should only need to be clicked once.   
If this is what was meant by buttons not working yet then please ignore.

- Bar graph of progress on downloads of pictures, etc.  Nothing big, though.  I  
was thinking along the lines of a small one where the info is or maybe changing  
the picture of earth by superimposing a pie graph or having night fall (day  
rise?) on the planet from east to west.

- I hate to complicate things, but IMHO if you left something open for linking  
in viewer modules to the main code instead of using service/apps I think common  
things like viewing gifs would be a lot easier.  At lease inline images should  
be done internal to the program as much as possible.  


- Definitely cache sound before playing.  Even over ethernet it can be too slow  
at times.

Great work, Omni-people!  Thanks a lot!

-Jim Phillips
 jcphill at uiuc.edu