Re: Technique Reducing The Need For In-Your-Face URLs

At 06:46 PM 1/17/2001 , Sean B. Palmer wrote:
> > Why not do it the other way around, and make the "in your face"
> > URLs something which disappears for "screen" use?
>I don't suppose it matters much as long as the "correct presentions are
>delivered to the correct people" :-)

That's a good point.  And it reminds me to check Edapta's (oops i
mean Reef's) PDF generation code, to see if we are including
URLs for printing when generating print versions of web sites.

> > and (c) there are a number of cases besides printing where you
> > might want to reveal a URL, such as if you expect something to
> > be cut-and-pasted into email frequently and you don't want to
> > lose specific URL citations.
>I believe that in these cases it should be possible to use UI specific
>functions that allow this (for example, right clicking in IE5 and selecting
>"copy shortcut". It would be helpful if you could outline further cases
>such as these.

The above is only one case, but in that specific case that I was
thinking of, it's an example of me reading something on a web page
and then wanting to email it to you, so I copy-and-paste and 
send it to you.  The links will be lost during that process.

Obviously, you don't want to include links all the time.  But I
think it's fair to suppose that there may be some cases in which
an author deliberately wants to expose the URL for any reason, and
the author's judgment should be accepted.  For example, when I 
teach my online classes, I provide resource links like this:

<dl>
   ...
   <dt><a>The Web Accessibility Initiative</a></dt>
   <dd><a href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/"
               >http://www.w3.org/WAI/</a>
       <br>
       The W3C's WAI project provides a lot of great resources
       blah blah blah bookmark this page.
   </dd>
   ...
</dl>

Printability is one of the primary reasons for this; as there is
no class textbook, I know a number of my students print out the
reading assignments and reference links.

Stylistically, I think inline "in your face" URLs are generally
nasty unless they specify a simple site address, such as
"the W3C's WAI (www.w3.org)".  [Yes, I know that's a machine
name, not a URI, but I submit that it is commonly accepted as
shorthand for a URI and easily understood by the audience.]

If a URL is going to be directly stated, I feel it should be
given by itself, and not inline; for example, the HWG's newsletter
often uses things like:

      For more on accessibility, see the AWARE Center web site
      located at:

           http://aware.hwg.org/

On a web page reproducing that newsletter, the URL would be a
link to itself; it would be improper for the archive of the
newsletter to rewrite the sentence when archiving, and it
would be improper for the newsletter to send raw HTML to Guild
members.

--Kynn
           
-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                http://kynn.com/
Technical Developer Relations, Reef           http://www.reef.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet   http://idyllmtn.com/
Contributor, Special Ed. Using XHTML     http://kynn.com/+seuxhtml
Unofficial Section 508 Checklist       http://kynn.com/+section508

Received on Wednesday, 17 January 2001 22:14:33 UTC