still hanging on a URL

Rock Pulak (RAPULAK@MACC.WISC.EDU)
Sun, 05 Feb 95 13:36 CDT

My browser (still) hangs on one of the items on the page
titled "VSNS-PPS UPDATE MESSAGES" without the quotes,
URL for this page: http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/latest/updates.html

>From this page I tried to link to (I moved the hand icon to the blue text
entitled) "30th.Jan'95 The Course HAS STARTED" without the quotes, and I
copied down the URL that the Mosaic browser displayed in the window for
this connection. This URL is
http://www.cryst.bbk.ac.uk/PPS/latest/pmr30_1.html and then I clicked
the mouse button. At that point the program "hung", "locked-up", the
little clock icon was spinning wildly but nothing happened. Before
selecting this link, I tried several of the other hypertext links on
this page. The list of links for this page is:

Back to Main Index
last updated 27th.Jan '95
30th.Jan'95 The Course HAS STARTED
27th.Jan'95 Creation of Groups
25th.Jan'95 Course Start Announcement
10.Jan'95 Update Message, PMR
2nd.Jan'95 Update Message,AM
Registration Acceptance (21st.Dec'95) Message
11th.Dec'94 Update Message,
Back to Main Index

Only the second item on this list failed to work. The others all
worked fine. I define "worked fine" as, I pointed to and clicked on
each of these items and in each case successfully connected to a new
page and could then return to the VSNS-PPS UPDATE MESSAGES page.

Peter Murray-Rust says:
> This is *not* the URL of any file on our system, nor can I find it
> in any document. (I have just run a worm round the whole of our
> hypertree and although there *are* a few bad links (mainly in the
> olf dl.ac.uk stuff, this isn't one of them. I suspect that either you
> have misinput it, or that it comes from another page outside our
> system. If, however, it *is* on our system. please let us know which page.

Well Peter, I don't care if you ran a herd of buffalo round the whole
hypertree :-), the text of the URL is as I indicated in my message. By
the way (BTW), what is a "worm"? Maybe your "worm" didn't understand
what it was suppose to look for? How do you know that the worm really
looked everywhere in the hypertree? How do you know your worm worked at
all? Did your worm find "pmr30_1.html"(without the quotes)?

Much, no most of this computer stuff is new to me. The worms I know
best are Caenorhabditis elegans. URLs are a misspelling of Urals,
a chain of mountains in eastern Europe. A browser is someone who is not
a serious shopper.

I didn't realize how much information I needed to include in my message
so that you would be able to find the problem. But you state with such
certainty that the URL indicated in my message is *not* the URL of any
file on your system, I wonder if you think I just made it up? Do you
think I just made up something that might look like a URL to waste your
time? Give me a break!!!

I mentioned in my first message about this problem that I hadn't tried
to make the link by typing the URL in by hand at the Open URL cmmd.
Well, I tried this today and it didn't work. What I mean is that I
couldn't connect to the "bad" URL from a cmmd line prompt either whereas
I could connect to the VSNS-PPS UPDATE MESSAGES window from a command
line prompt. Yes, typing in the URL is a valid way to use a browser -

> it's actually a valid and useful way to use a browser! :-)

but I don't think the Web would be as popular if, in order to move from
one page to another, you had to type these long awkward addresses.
Almost like typing in a bibliography. It's not hard to do but there are
always lots of typing errors. And of course, this is just my opinion.

I want to close by mentioning that I think that Peter and Alan and
others are doing a terrific job of getting this course up and running
and keeping it as smooth as it has been. I am glad there are people
like Peter and Alan that are interested enough in this new
technology to try it out and make it available for those like me.


Rock Pulak, rapulak@macc.wisc.edu, Biochemistry, UW-Madison