RE: Hyperlinks depend on GET (was: Re: REST and the Web)

> From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
> noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com
> Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 4:41 AM
> To: Paul Prescod
> Cc: www-tag@w3.org
> Subject: Hyperlinks depend on GET (was: Re: REST and the Web)
> ...
>
> I think we are underrating the role of the browser in that scenario if we
> assert that hyperlinking is intimately dependent on GET.  It's
> the browser
> that decides to do a GET.  Another application might know to DELETE every
> resource that's selected.   Another example:  let's say we have an NFS:
> URI scheme, a means of linking to NFS mountable volumes.  Cool
> idea.  When
> I click on such a link, do I want to GET the entire volume?
> Probably not,
> but mounting it would be great.  And the fact that I could
> imagine putting
> such an NFS link on a web page is the essence of hyperlinking IMO.  Same
> with mailto: links;  they generally send rather than GET mail when
> selected.  Metcalf's law:  the power of my system grows when I
> can mix all
> of these as needed.  That's why I don't want to limit the Web to
> retrievable documents.
>
> ...

A similar problem arises when trying to get browsers to play with WebDAV
servers. Users expect a link to a resource to perform a "GET". However, what
if you want to point somebody to the "folder view" of a collection of HTTP
resources (as defined by WebDAV)? As the PROPFINDable information doesn't
have it's own URI (now if somebody has a proposal how to make WebDAV more
GET-friendly, I'd like to hear that :-)), there's no simple (and no
standardized way) to do this.

Microsoft's Yaron Goland wrote a nice summary about the integration of
WebDAV into Internet Explorer:

<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2000JanMar/0247.html>

Julian

Received on Saturday, 30 March 2002 06:12:35 UTC