- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:19:48 +0000 (UTC)
On Mon, 8 Feb 2010, Brett Zamir wrote: > > Internet Explorer has an attribute on anchor elements for URNs: > http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms534710%28VS.85%29.aspx > > This has not caught on in other browsers, though I believe it could be a very > powerful feature once the feature was supported with a UI that handled URNs > (as with adding support for custom protocols). > > Imagine, for example, to take a link like: > > <a href="http://www.amazon.com/...(shortened)...." > urn="isbn:9210020251">United Nations charter</a> > > The default behavior would simply follow the link, but if a user agent > supported the @urn attribute, and if the browser (or browser add-ons) > had registered support for that URN namespace identifier (here "isbn"), > it could, for example, open a dialog to ask which handler to use (or > whether to always use it), it could ask or otherwise allow in > preferences an HTML page (with wildcards) where the attribute's content > could be passed, or it could give the option whenever the user > right-clicked to choose which handler they wanted to use for a given > link. Does this match IE's behaviour with the urn="" attribute? Historically, browsers that have wanted to offer dedicated services for specific features, e.g. the iPhone handling map views using a dedicated Maps application, have done so by simply overriding parts of the URL space, e.g. in that case detecting when a page is on the Google Maps site and parsing the URL locally instead of sending it to the remote site. Is there really a need for a more dedicated mechanism? It's not clear that there is much pent-up demand for this. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 17:19:48 UTC