Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!rochester!fulk
From: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: America Online
Message-ID: <1989Dec9.170635.22759@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 89 17:06:35 GMT
Reply-To: fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 40

The person who responded to my last posting on this issue still misses the
point about caching files and menus:

First of all, one has to download the menus at session startup.  They change
very rarely, so I don't really see why that is necessary.  If the latest version
were on my disk, I could even use the AO software (with easy mods) to look at
old stuff I had saved.  If I choose an option that hadn't been saved, the
program could bug me to sign on.

I don't want my screen full of little, indistinguishable menus that I have
to select from to navigate.  I always close a window when I exit it, in order
to avoid that.  However, if I want to return to the same menu later, I have to
wait for it to download.  Please don't force me into choosing between two
lousy alternatives: a screen full of menus or slowed-down navigation.  Also
don't tell me about keywords; I understand how they work, but given that there
is no menu of them, I will not remember more than the very few I use most
frequently.  I'd also rather mouse around than type.

Caching files such as help documents is even more to the point, as they take
longer to download.  Using a folder structure that echoes the AO menu structure
would be particularly nice; one wouldn't have to make on-the-fly decisions about
where to put files and it would still be easy to find them after a session.
(This not so much for help files as for, say, news stories.)  Furthermore,
if one later found oneself writing mail about a news story, say, it would be
quick to retrieve it.  The primary cost to the user would be the need to
occasionally clean house of old files.

Your point about binhexed files is well-taken.  I hope that someone occasionally
checks and un-binhexes binhexed uploaded files.

The AO interface is really very nice.  I don't know of any other online service
that is close to as good, so please take my proposals in the spirit in which
they are intended.  On the other hand, DON'T REST ON YOUR LAURELS.  There are
some relatively minor adjustments that would make the service a lot nicer.  In
particular, I hope that noone is putting off such changes in order to keep
people signed in longer, paying the (fortunately, very good) connect time price.
That would be short-sighted; the loss of customers to irritation would exceed
the gain of fees from longer sessions.

AO name: MarkFulk