Steve,
You said this better than I could have - loss of transparency is making it harder for application designers to make correct use of the Internet easier for users, and it wasn't THAT easy to make correct use easy in the FIRST place...
Spencer
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 9:39 AM
> To: Dawkins, Spencer [RICH1:2011-I:EXCH]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Email messages: How large is too large?
>
> The large email issue is mostly a UI issue. To attach a file
> with most
> popular mail clients, one simply has to click on a few
> menues. Little or no
> external configuration is required. For an external
> reference, one has to
> upload the file to some repository, and make sure that mail
> message is
> delayed until the upload is complete. Repositories vary in
> name, access
> method, authentication, etc., even without firewalls and NAT.
> (It cannot, in
> general, be on the user's machine, because dial-up machines
> aren't connected
> all the time.) The sender's mail system probably can't do that stuff
> transparently, because of the authentication issues. And the
> send needs
> a progress indicator for the upload of the file as well as the mail.
>
> Bottom line: it's not just harder, it's inherently harder,
> but good UIs would
> help a lot.
>
> --Steve Bellovin
>
>
>
