I think what people were complaining about was not just that there wsa a
wait for the image to show up, but that there was for some reason a wait
for _other_ parts of the page to load, parts that were unrelated to GBS
but for some reason were waiting for GBS to load before they could load.
I don't think that is intended by GBS API?
Jonathan
Frederic Demians wrote:
> GoogleBook API is designed to allow an asynchronous workflow:
>
> 1. Client web browser send a request to Library server.
> 2. Library server send back biblio records to client
> 3. Client web browser display the HTML document containing biblio
> records.
> 4. Client send to GoogleBook via JavaScript a list of retrieved bilio
> records isbn
> 5. GoogleBook send back a list of image URLs for each available ISBN
> in GoogleBook.
> 6. A JavaScript callback function receive URLs sent by GoogleBook and
> insert images into already displayed HTML document.
>
> That's why there is a delay to display book cover images: at step 3
> biblio records are already displayed but images are only available at
> step 6.
>
> All AJAX applications may encounter this delay. Spinning wait icons have
> been created for this purpose:
>
> http://www.andrewdavidson.com/articles/spinning-wait-icons/
>
> GoogleBook design has drawbacks:
>
> * delay
> * client IP-ISBN tracking as said by someone (Google-Big brother
> syndrome?)
>
> But also advantages:
>
> * a light html document containing search result can be displayed
> quickly
> * with client IP address, GoogleBook knows where client comes from
> and so can send geographical relevant information like 'see this
> book in a local bookstore' links.
>
> --
> Frédéric
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri May 16 2008 - 15:10:18 EDT