[WEB4LIB] Needing your big brains

[Thomas Dowling]

> Ok, I've got a tricky one for you all.
>
> I teach a basic Internet class
> http://reference.camden.lib.nj.us/classes/garwood/navigating using
Netscape
> (sometimes IE) and review all the buttons on the toolbar (Back,
Forward,
> Home, etc.) during the class. I've been trying to figure out a way to
show
> how Stop works. Basically, what I've been thinking is that I would
like to
> make a link on a page that when clicked on takes "forever" to connect
to
> anything, thereby allowing me to show people that the Stop button will
stop
> the "transaction" between the two computers.
>
> Anyone know a way of doing this? Is there a better solution I'm not
thinking
> of?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Steve
>

[My brain isn't so big, but people tell me it's very dense.]

Ye olde 80MB JPEG file is one solution.  If you don't want to strain
your server so badly, it's pretty trivial to write a CGI script that
will take a long time to run (the trick is usually to *prevent* it from
taking so long!):

#!/usr/bin/ksh
echo Content-type: text/html
echo
echo "<title>Foo</title><p>This"
sleep 5
echo is
sleep 5
echo going
sleep 5
echo very
sleep 5
echo "slowly</p>"


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu