Re: Method for A? (fwd)

MegaZone (megazone@livingston.com)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT) 

Message-Id: <199709252100.OAA15361@server.livingston.com>
To: www-html@w3.org
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: MegaZone <megazone@livingston.com>
Subject: Re: Method for A? (fwd)

Once upon a time Mike Meyer shaped the electrons to say...
>This could also be (in fact, at one time was) coded as:
>
>	<FORM ACTION="gateway.cgi" METHOD=POST>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=NEXT>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=CURRENT>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=PREVIOUS>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=SAVE>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=PROCESS>
>	<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT NAME=ACTION VALUE=DELETE>
>	</FORM>

So if you don't like the buttons, perhaps the <BUTTON> element from 
HTML 4.0 and styles will get you the rendering you prefer.

>Basically, the <A> version is better in all ways but one. That one is
>that popular browsers feel free to reload the displayed page without
>checking with the user.

The user clicked on the link thereby providing consent to reload.  If
they don't want to reload, don't click on the link.

I don't find your argument to be a valid one.

>In particular, resizing the display after deleting an object caused at
>least one major browser to reload the page, resulting in the NEXT
>object also being deleted "accidently". This actually happened once.

Sounds more like a bug in the browser than a problem with HTML.

>The goal is that pages fetched with a POST can not be safely refetched
>without asking the user would have prevented this from happening.

Even if POST was added to an A tag I severely doubt browser would change
behavior.  If you clicked on the A they'd take that to be the same thing
as clicking SUBMIT on a form and send it.  That's how I'd code it, and
that's how I hope they'd code it.  Being prompting "IS this ok?" when
clicking on a link serves no purpose IMHO and would be very annoying.

Again - the user clicked on the link, they wanted to go, and gave their
approval upfront.

>> IMHO moot point - I don't think any major vendor would bother with it.
>In that case, why do we bother with a standards organization at all?

My point is that to get in approved the actual W3C members would have to
go with it, which means the vendors, and I don't see a justification to
this feature.

-MZ
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