Re: Linking to binary URLs

At 12:01 p.m. 10/01/98 +1000, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>But perhaps there should be a guideline about this:

>Guideline: Where a link points to a resource in a 'format which is not a w3c 
>recommendation (eg pdf, zip, powerpoint etc - what is the position of 
>plain text here?)' then it should be made clear in the text (preferably) 
>of, or (else) near the link what kind of a resource is being pointed to. 
>[p2/3?]

The TYPE attribute should also be used for non-HTML links too.

Expanded example:

This document is available in several formats: <A 
href="mydoc.htm">HTML version</A>, <A HREF="mydoc.rtf"
TYPE="application/rtf">Rich Text Format 
(Priamrily for Microsoft Word processors)</A>, <A HREF="mydoc.pdf"
TYPE="application/pdf">PDF-Portable Document or Acrobat format, which
requires</A> the <A HREF="http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/">the acrobat
reader, which can be downloaded free for many platforms</A>.

This allows a clever user agent (of which none currently exist,
mind you) to flag selected links that are not supported or perhaps
are set to be flagged by user preferences.

Sample rendering:

This document is available in several formats: _HTML version_,
_Rich Text Format_ [Unsupported], _PDF-Portable Document or
Acrobat format which requires_ [External viewer] the _the acrobat
reader, which can be downloaded free for many platforms_.



--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>             http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California
Enroll now for my online stylesheets (CSS) class! http://www.hwg.org/classes/
The voice of the future?   http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/w3c/voicebrowsers.html

Received on Wednesday, 30 September 1998 22:56:14 UTC