Re: use <A>, not <LINK> in skip-navigation technique from ACB

We are pretty much in flaming agreement, here.

Let me hasten to add that I am not against _using_ LINK to point to these
points.  What I am concerned about is _relying on_ LINK to make sure the
user has a clear and convenient path to the meat of the page.

I wouldn't be quite so pessimistic as what you said about the future of the
LINK functionality.  It is too soon to know how this will shake out in
practice, but the functional capabilities for X-link appear to make apt
expression of 'secondary' or informative and cross relationships easier to
express and to roll up into authoring methods.

I think we are stuck with "what you don't see is what you don't get" until
authors  view what they are doing from multiple views as they write/paste.
At least search engines have them using META.

Al

At 03:17 PM 8/24/99 +0100, Alan J. Flavell wrote:
>On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Al Gilman wrote:
>
>> In the issues list, a link bypassing front-end administrivia is discussed
>> as using a LINK element.  I believe this is a bad idea.
>
>Well, I believe it's an excellent _idea_.  But unfortunately somewhat
>impractical with many current browsers, which refused to follow the
>good example of some earlier browsers, and failed to implement any
>support for this part of HTML2.0.
>
>> For best results, I believe we should stick
>> with the A element.  It enjoys wider support in browsers.
>
>In view of the practicalities, I sadly have to agree with you.
>
>Unfortunately, by doing so, we pretty much ensure that LINK will never
>get implemented again, leaving it as a minority aid for the users of
>emacs-w3, Lynx, and any remaining users of Win Mosaic, UdiWWW etc.
>
>I find it rather a pity that many pages whose _content_ I wanted, 
>"hide" it below a massive array of navigation aids to places that I
>have no wish to go.  This is also promoted by the habit of putting
>navigation links in a _left_ column alongside content.
>
>While I have no objection to this approach on pages whose major reason
>for existence is to _act_ as navigation centres, I feel it's
>unfortunate and counter-productive to follow the same pattern on pages
>whose main purpose is their content.  Certainly some navigation links
>are a good idea on that kind of page too (I mean, not only those A
>links that are cited from the running text), but I prefer them to be
>at the foot of the page - or even in a right=hand column.
>
>(For what it's worth, although this probably goes into too much detail
>for the current discussion, I like to use a procedure that
>automatically creates navigation aids in two places: <LINK> tags in
>the <HEAD>, and <A> links at the foot of the page, based on the list
>of "Home, Prev, Next,..., Email" URLs that the author provides to the
>procedure.)
>
>best regards
>

Received on Tuesday, 24 August 1999 11:12:40 UTC