Re: Identifying D-links with "rel"

> What is the advantages of using "rel=dlink" over "class=dlink" for
> providing a mechanism for UAs to identify a D-Link ?
> Jon

Responding to messages from Nir and Jon.

Bottom line: class is better than rel, because it's supported by css1.

After Nir sent his message, I sent this message to the W3C HTML staff.


| For WAI, we'd like to be able to mark a particular type of link as
| being a long description for an image.
| 
| First we though about
| 
|   <IMG SRC=foo ALT=bar> <A CLASS=dlink HREF=foo> D </A>
| 
| but then we said, why not use REL instead, which seems more specific:
| 
|   <IMG SRC=foo ALT=bar> <A REL=dlink HREF=foo> D </A>
| 
| but someone said rel is for a relation between the current *document*
| and the target, not the current element (that would be the A here)
| 
| From HTML4:
| A.rel = link-types [CI]
|      This attribute describes the relationship from the current document to
|      the anchor specified by the href attribute. The value of this attribute
|      is a space-separated list of link types.
| 
| I understand REL for LINK is for the current document, but why is REL
| for A for the whole document as well ?
| 

and Dave Raggett said:


| The formal model (after Dexter) is that of a source anchor and
| destination anchor.  For LINK the source anchor is the document,
| while for A it is the element. You could still use the REL attribute
| as in your second example, since the type of the link is associated
| in this case with the semantics that the element follows an image
| element and references information that pertains to it. 
| 
| On a practical note, CSS1 can't match against the value of the REL
| attribute, so if that is important, you may want to use the CLASS
| attribute to allow you to style such anchors. This is not a problem
| for CSS2, though, which can match REL attributes.