Re: Feedback on the ping="" attribute (ISSUE-1)

On 11/8/07, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Julian Reschke wrote:
> > My experience is that most people do understand the difference between a
> > link and a button.
>
> Really?  Given the number of links out there that perform non-idempotent and
> unsafe actions, and the number of buttons that perform idempotent and safe
> actions, I'd be quite surprised by that.
>
> People do understand the difference between a "search" link or button and a "buy
> this" link or button.  But that's a matter of context, not of mechanism.  I
> agree that typical users understand context.  They don't understand mechanism,
> nor should they need to.

Yes, it's always bothered me that browser vendors opted to render GET
and POST form buttons identically.  Regardless, I've yet to meet a
user who didn't understand that link-clicking was something they could
do without fear, i.e. safe.  We can all point to examples of links
that when dereferenced do something harmful (Google Web Accelerator
meets Ruby on Rails v1 anyone?), but the *vast* majority do not.

I'd also suggest that the Web simply would not exist if this
expectation was not pervasive amoungst its users.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2007 22:12:11 UTC