Re: lynx and image maps

On Jan 31, 22:14, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Foteos Macrides wrote:
> > 	There is nothing in the HTML 2.0 or subsequent protocols which
> > makes image maps via IMG tags adequately accessible to non-GUI clients.
> 
> Sure, but the imagemap functionality on the server-side could.  When 
> a client makes a request to a map resource without coordinates, the cgi 
> program (or the functionality in the server if the imagemap-functionality 
> is built-in) could return a menu of the links available instead of the 
> silly "your browser does not support imagemaps" error message.

Do you really want the user to be able to see all of the links?

Sometimes you just want the user choose the appropriate coordinates,
and do his thing...  Say you have a fairly dense weather map, that gives
you the current weather for 900 airports in North America.  Would
you want some user trying *all* the coordinates just out of a "gee-wiz"
reflex?  This service might be offered freely because it isn't too much
of a burden on your resources.  As soon as some dweeb comes and
starts doing a "breadth-first" search of your Web info, and possibly
incurring significant CPU or network bandwidth utilisation, then you
might rethink altruistically offeirng something to the Web.

I think browsers (like MSIE and netscape) that print out the HREF
portion of a <a> are a bad thing, but then it's too late for that to
be changed now.

Summary:  opacity is a good thing (sometimes, especially when you
want to avoid innocent but pointless or costly over-use of resources).
Client-side maps that list all of the links (*without* doing a
View Source) are probably a bad thing.

-Philip

Received on Thursday, 1 February 1996 16:03:42 UTC