Re: "Web Page" and a "Page Instance"

The concepts of web unit, and web page are indeed difficult ones to pin
down. But I think these are separate but related things:
 
I like to think of a web session as a dialogue between user and server over
a specific time period, intermediated by a browser.

A user utterance essentially boils down to a (typically HTTP) request, and
this can be initiated by typing a URI into the address bar, or explicitly
clicking a link or other UI element in an existing rendering.

The "web unit" I think of as the servers (typically HTTP) response to that
utterance at a specific point in time, it includes the initial returned root
resource - which replaces the current root resource, plus any embedded
linked resources (and recursively their embedded resources) subsequently
requested by the browser and received, before the time of the next user
utterance.

The "web page" is the rendering of the "web unit" over the period of time
from the initiating utterance up to the next user utterance.

AJAX type processing makes it all seem more complex as script will generate
more requests and responses which modify the "web page", and this may be at
user request or not; but unless these replace the root resource, they can be
considered the same kind of processing as embedded resources (especially
streaming resources).

This definition includes the important aspect of time dependency, which is
crucial for a full semantics of the web. But makes conformance testing
problematic; since a server may have returned a satisfactorily accessible
"web page" every time it has been accessed by a specific URI, yet this is no
guarantee it will continue to do so in the future.

Sean Hayes.

On 20/10/06 22:45, "Johannes Koch" <koch@w3development.de> wrote:

> 
> David MacDonald schrieb:
>> "Web Page"
>> 
>> a collection of information that is rendered in the User Agent or User
>> Agents, consisting of one or more resources or components intended to be
>> rendered together and identified by a single Uniform Resource Identifier
>> (URI). 
> 
> Again: Which single Uniform Resource Identifier does identify the "Web
> Page" formerly known as "Web Unit"? Which resources are intended to be
> rendered together (external style for different media, external
> alternate style, nested objects, etc.)?

Received on Saturday, 21 October 2006 10:26:47 UTC