I was wondering why I got a mirror selection screen to download the extended CHM while I was already using a mirror (nl.php.net)? It doesn't seem logical that I have to choose a mirror to me.
This was the same since the mirror selection page was introduced by Colin. Every mirror prompts you for a mirror selection before downloading for PHP packages. Now as we discussed, this is extended to include the documentation files (as they are many times bigger then the PHP source/binary files).
I have also thought about sending users directly to the file instead of asking for a mirror selection on mirrors, but it might be problematic. If you click on any URL shortcut on php.net, you get to a mirror site. The /get URLs are URL shortcuts. You get to a mirror site, which is supposed to be close to you. There if there would be no mirror selection page, it would mean that if you click on a /get link on php.net, the site would choose one mirror for you, from which you will be forced to download the file, or go manually to a different mirror site elsewhere.
So this question goes down to the same principal question which we have asked before. Is the automatically selected mirror site (which can be overriden now BTW in My PHP.net) suitable for downloads or not? Given that is can be overriden, it seems to be OK to me to skip the mirror selection process on mirror sites.
Given this change, there will hardly be a user hitting the mirror selection page, as mirror selection will be done automatically (or using the My PHP.net setting) at PHP.net and will be ignored on other mirrors. This drops one step from the downloads. And if we suppose that the automatic mirror selection is OK, then this is fine with me :)
Goba