Re: Frames and Documents (fwd)

   From: Abigail <abigail@uk.fnx.com>
| 
| You mean that if you want to point to a framed document, the way to
| go is make a page with a copy of the frameset in which the frame is
| in, with the right pages loaded, and link to that?
| What if I want to point from a Usenet article, and cannot put a
| WWW page somewhere?
| 
| I always thought hyperlinks should be easy.
---

As easy as they can be, and no easier.

Clearly (at least it's clear to me) the ability to point someone to a
configuration of multiple documents, all open at once, is more powerful
than the ability to point to a single place in a single document.

With today's tools (including Netscape's frames), there doesn't seem to
be anyway of doing this other than to create a synthetic framed document
in the configuration you want to show and then point to that.  This is
admittedly clunky and may be impractical in many circumstances.

So, the question is, whether the additional utility is worth the effort
of specification and implementation of a new mechanism that allows you
to specify a configuration on the citing side as opposed to the cited
side.  This would allow links to configurations and would allow
self-contained bookmarks for configurations.

One cute idea that comes to mind is to allow A elements to contain an
inline text/html document.  The document could either be contained in
a new attribute (CONTENT) or could be represented in a new URL syntax
in the existing HREF attribute.  In either case the semantic would be
that selecting the link would present the CONTENT as
though it had been returned by a server.  The embedded HTML could use
the Netscape frames syntax or the proposed stylesheet layout extensions
to define a page configuration.

Would you consider that easy?

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com

Received on Tuesday, 10 September 1996 11:13:50 UTC