Re: Remembering the last used mirror

On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 08:51:48AM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > Dave Page wrote:
> >>>  (Or for that matter, does anybody think this whole
> >>> thing is a crappy idea?)
> >> Yes, we used to do that and it was a real pita that caused nothing but trouble.
> >
> > Really? That must've been before my time, 'cuz I don't remember any of
> > that.
>
> It almost certainly was, back when Vince did most of the web stuff.

That was certainly way back. And I *do* remember there being problems
around that. I thoguht yo were referring to ftp downloads specifically.

> > Out of curiosity, exactly what were the issues, if you recall?
> > (Not questioning you, just want to know given that so many others to it
> > that way..)
>
> Well it was slightly different back then so what you have now may be OK
> - I just want to make sure it's gonna work this time before
> inadvertently annoying people!

:-) Yeah, that's why I brought it up before I committed anything.


> Back then, the front page of the website was an auto-redirect to one of
> the mirror sites. This used to lead to two problems:
>
> - If the site you got directed to was down or slow, it was a nightmare
> to get to another mirror because the auto-redirect kicked in instantly
> when you hit the back button. This shouldn't be a problem this time as
> now I'm in a position to look at what you've done, I can see you display
> the page, a warning and give a delay before redirecting.

Right, this is the very reason why I want to discuss that timeout of 5
seconds. It will direct you off there in 5 seconds. If the site is very
slow, you can click on another link. If the site is 404 (but hasn't been
picked up by the mirror checkign script yet), you will get redirected to
that 404 page. But at least in my tests with firefox, if I then hit
back, I get to the mirror list and it will *not* redirect me again. But
that's a client-side thing, so it might be different in different
browsers.


> - After the auto-redirect had kicked in, some browsers (notably, IE)
> misbehave and won't respond to the stop or back button for some time -
> seemingly whilst they wait for the initial connection to succeed or
> timeout. This could also be a PITA, but should be purely a browser issue
> with the delay you've included (it magnified the annoyance levels caused
> by the bad design previously).

I haven't seen that with any other sites, so maybe it's just been fixed
in more recent versions of the browsers. There have been a couple coming
out since that time :-)


> So I *think* the main issues that auto-redirecting had last time round
> are not problems with your code.
>
> One thought that does spring to mind though, what happens if the mirror
> used previously has dropped out of use when you return? Will it still
> default to it?

No, then it will not show a default mirror at all - it will look like
you had never picked a mirror.

I'll attach a diff for the actual code, so you can check that part out.
Should've done that the first time :-)

//Magnus