Does this mean we need to start lobbying against connectionless protocols like HTTP so we can better download multiple files? hah And POP3 probably existed long before the old BBS', so it's not that things got LESS efficient, it's just that we didn't NEED to bundle bunches of emails together into a single file because of crappy dialup connections and crappy modems and the necessity of keeping transfers to quick bursts with some basic CRC checking to ensure file integrity. Now we're able to transfer things uncompressed fairly quickly and with some fairly decent assurance that it'll arrive un-borked. I assume hardware takes care of most of the error checking these days. Praise Cisco (among others). At any rate, the programs I mentioned before will allow you to download multiple files off of a website or queue up multiple links for downloading en masse (assuming the links go directly to the files and not a download page of some kind... or a download link that uses sessions or tokens or something that expire). So there are plenty of options for downloading multiple files via HTTP... just need a means to queue them. So all is not lost. Again, if you missed them: Download Acclerator Plus: http://www.speedbit.com/ http://www.download.com/3000-2071_4-10037157.html GetRight: http://www.getrite.com/ Go!Zilla: http://www.gozilla.com/ Firefox Extension: DownloadThemAll: http://www.downthemall.net/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201 Firefox Extension: FlashGot (this looks like it does something similar): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/220 Some of these are commercial products and some were good years ago but who knows how they are now, might be full of spyware for all I know (this is my disclaimer against potential suckage.. I havn't used any of these except DownloadThemAll recently so can't really vouch for what they are now). Anyway, stop lamenting the good old days.. there are solutions now to do what you want to do. I wouldn't be suprised if there was an email message 'bundler' so you didn't have to download emails one at a time via archaic POP3 too..hah Back to the OT and OP... doing this with PHP would take a little cleverness and probably isn't worth it. But might be a fun challenge and is certainly possible with enough elbow grease put into it. -TG Sysop: Hangar 18 BBS (410), 1992-1994 (give or take) http://www.bbsmates.com/viewbbs.aspx?id=80682 = = = Original message = = = Jim Moseby wrote: > I remember, way back when, transferring multiple files was simple. The good > ole days of ZModem. Maybe todays technology will catch up eventually. ;^) I doubt it :) Things were so much more optimised back then! I remember packaging all my mail up into QWK bundles, downloading it all in one go for offline reading, then packaging my responses up in the same way. So much more efficient than POP3 it's untrue. Ahh.. the good old BBS days. Cheers, Rich -- Zend Certified Engineer http://www.corephp.co.uk "Never trust a computer you can't throw out of a window" -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php