RE: in-your-face URLs: please don't.

Dan,

Sorry if you didn't like that usage. I use it once in a while when I'm 
referring off-site and I want to encourage you to bookmark it, or have it 
on a printout. You're right, it is not the form I should normally use, and 
hopefully don't -- the text comes from some earlier material, not all of 
which was on the web (much as you used a URL in your email -- I tried to 
make it flow in the reading of the text).

Trellix does not do anything special for that construct -- it was purely my 
typing. On most of my recent stuff I only use URLs explicitly in text in 
lists of site names where you might want to print them out. Also, remember 
that URLs have some meaning to people and, whether we like it or not, we do 
understand and attach meanig to them as people sometimes having read many 
of them. As I point out in 
http://www.gooddocuments.com/techniques/goodlinks.htm sometimes a URL like 
"www.acmeco.com" can be better than "company homepage" in text. I don't 
encourage the practice normally, but for home pages they may be OK if it 
fits with the writing. Do you agree?

What Trellix does help is making maps like the one I used on the LCS 35th 
anniversary ( http://www.bricklin.com/albums/lcs35/ ) and keeping track of 
the lists of related pages and automatically providing lists of links with 
updated titles.

Hope you like the rest of the site.

-DanB

----------
From: 	Dan Connolly[SMTP:connolly@w3.org]
Sent: 	Thursday, August 12, 1999 10:30 AM
To: 	comments@gooddocuments.com
Cc: 	gerald@w3.org; timbl@w3.org; wai-wcag-editor@w3.org
Subject: 	in-your-face URLs: please don't.

Dan,

Your website (http://www.gooddocuments.com/) seems to be full of the

	... interesting thing at
	<a href="http://www.foo.com/dir/f">www.foo.com/dir/f</a>

idiom. For example:

	(Chris also teaches journalism at Boston University --
	he has a web site at www.bu.edu/cdaly.)

	-- http://www.gooddocuments.com/philosophy/trellixdev.htm

I hope the trellix product doesn't encourage this idiom.

why not just

	(Chris also teaches journalism at Boston University --
	he has a _web site_.)

or better:


	(Chris also teaches journalism at Boston University --
	see _Chris Daly's Home Page_).


Please see:

	Avoid talking about mechanisms -- Hypertext Style Guide
	http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/NoMechanics
	?Tim BL 1992,93,94,95

Tim, I suggest you add a paragraph about the url-in-your-face
idiom.

	If you use the original World Wide Web program,
	you never see a URL or have to deal with HTML.
	-- INTERVIEW Tim Berners-Lee
	On Simplicity, Standards,
	and "Intercreativity"
	http://www.w3j.com/3/s1.interview.html

I think this affects accessability; it's discussed in general
at

	http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#links

but not specifically. WCAG folks, please add something.

--
Dan Connolly, W3C
http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 12 August 1999 12:10:01 UTC