Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!fulk
From: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: America Online
Message-ID: <1989Dec4.214248.9205@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 89 21:42:48 GMT
Reply-To: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 30

I posted the following to America Online's suggestions board a few days
ago, and haven't heard a reply yet.  Netters may be interested.

Suggestions after two hours of use:

1) Cache menus and (optionally) documents on the user's Mac.  Caching menus
should be a selectable option.  Whenever viewing a document, a user should
be given the option of saving it.  Whenever the user returns to a previously
cached menu or document, the user's Mac sends the dateline of the cached
file back to AO with the request, and AO responds either "up-to-date"
or with the updated document (even better, a diff file).  The datelines
of files and menus should be the first line.

This would have saved me about 20 minutes of those two hours, and a lot
of irritation.

2) Implement a binary file transfer protocol and stop binhexing stuffed files.
Binhexing adds 33% to the length of a file.

3) Provide a picture of the tree of menus somewhere.

4) (more a complaint) Speed up stock quotes.  I could look them up in the
Times faster than asking for them on Stocklink.

5) Provide usenet news, at least comp.sys.mac and comp.binaries.mac.
I have it at work, but lots of people don't.

Mark
internet: fulk@cs.rochester.edu
America Online: MarkFulk