Re: use <A>, not <LINK> in skip-navigation technique from ACB

On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Al Gilman wrote:

> In the issues list, a link bypassing front-end administrivia is discussed
> as using a LINK element.  I believe this is a bad idea.

Well, I believe it's an excellent _idea_.  But unfortunately somewhat
impractical with many current browsers, which refused to follow the
good example of some earlier browsers, and failed to implement any
support for this part of HTML2.0.

> For best results, I believe we should stick
> with the A element.  It enjoys wider support in browsers.

In view of the practicalities, I sadly have to agree with you.

Unfortunately, by doing so, we pretty much ensure that LINK will never
get implemented again, leaving it as a minority aid for the users of
emacs-w3, Lynx, and any remaining users of Win Mosaic, UdiWWW etc.

I find it rather a pity that many pages whose _content_ I wanted, 
"hide" it below a massive array of navigation aids to places that I
have no wish to go.  This is also promoted by the habit of putting
navigation links in a _left_ column alongside content.

While I have no objection to this approach on pages whose major reason
for existence is to _act_ as navigation centres, I feel it's
unfortunate and counter-productive to follow the same pattern on pages
whose main purpose is their content.  Certainly some navigation links
are a good idea on that kind of page too (I mean, not only those A
links that are cited from the running text), but I prefer them to be
at the foot of the page - or even in a right=hand column.

(For what it's worth, although this probably goes into too much detail
for the current discussion, I like to use a procedure that
automatically creates navigation aids in two places: <LINK> tags in
the <HEAD>, and <A> links at the foot of the page, based on the list
of "Home, Prev, Next,..., Email" URLs that the author provides to the
procedure.)

best regards

Received on Tuesday, 24 August 1999 10:17:30 UTC