Re: A little back to basics (Re: Users should have (Re: Fresh start? Re: Minimal Browser Capabilities))

"Scott Luebking" <phoenixl@sonic.net> :
> There seems to be two basic strategies for accessing different versions
> of a web page.  One strategey has a way to track a user's preference by
> using cookies or including session information in the URL.  The other
> strategy is to provide parallel tree structures.  I think that both are
> reasonable depending of the development resources possible.  For some
> places where the availability of programmers to hadle cookies or
> rewriting URL's is very limited, the parallel tree approach might be
> reasonable.

Neither of these approaches seem to be addressing the problems I see of
how you provide multiple versions (navigating within a version once you've
found it is easy, there are lots of solutions.) The problem is how to you
know what version to give a user when they first find your url, and how do
you make it possible for one person to provide a link to the resource to
another regardless of what their respective accessibility needs are.
(Especially where "one person" is actually a search engine.)

For example, saying, here's a great resource on chickens:
 http://www.example.invalid/lowgraphics/sound/chickens/ is no use if the
use I'm sending it to a user who doesn't want sound or high graphics - and
with the cookie approach it's even worse as there is I might guess what
lowgraphics/sound/ was accessibility specific and send a more general
/chickens

> If the parallel tree approach is used, peoviding links to versions od
> the page in other trees would be desirable.

It's a essential as the whole idea of hyperlinking is that you won't know
where someone might arrive.

Jim.

Received on Tuesday, 1 January 2002 18:02:18 UTC