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

Mark Baker wrote:
> Yes, it's always bothered me that browser vendors opted to render GET
> and POST form buttons identically.

Given the existence of <input type="image">, does it matter?

> 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.

The expectation is that unless you've typed in a credit card number you can 
click _anything_ without fear, from what I've seen.  Again, the difference 
between GET and POST is just not something users know about (or much care). I'm 
not sure they should need to, either...

They do know and care about the context of their actions (see the credit card 
thing above).  But as for mechanism?  Not so much.

Again, my experience, with intelligent people in their 30s and older.  I don't 
know that many teenagers, unfortunately; maybe they have different expectations. 
  And my 20-30 sample is badly biased (technical folks, etc), so not reliable as 
a predictor of the population at large.  There could, of course, be age-bias 
issues here.

Again, I'd love to see reliable usability data either way.

-Boris

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2007 23:51:08 UTC