Re: Invisible D link.

At 11:20 PM 15/09/97 -0500, Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:
>What if we could somehow have an invisible D link.  
>One that only showed up if the Graphics were turned 
>off ...

I like, and have used, an equivalent of the "invisible D-link" on some test
sites.  The only caveat to its use with graphical browsers has to do with
the persistence of their disk cache.  If you ever, intentionally or by
mistake, visit such a page with graphics enabled, then you may never get to
see the invisible link and its critical information.  Very few browsers let
you flip back and forth between graphics and no-graphics on the fly (most
let you go to graphics from non, but not the other way).  Furthermore, not
all users may be aware of their cache-flushing ability.  Thus a method that
can be defeated by a persistent cache may not be the ideal.  And (shudder!)
there are still people using old graphical browsers that don't display
alt-text.

However, that does suggest a guideline for the browser developers WG:
"Include a command that will clear-cache and reload in text-only mode, to
complement the existing feature that allows graphics re-load from text-only
mode."

While I am pleased the Technical WG is moving towards some resolution about
LONGDESC, OBJECT, and METADATA, etc., the visible D-link  is still the only
fully backwardly-compatible solution.  I wish it wasn't.


Regards,
Chuck Letourneau

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 1997 10:44:17 UTC