A thought

It occurred to me that when a user clicks on an <A HREF="blah"..> it 
might be nice to offer some kind of immediate feedback, from the page 
on which the <A HREF...> occurs.

For example, (and I don't suggest this syntax as a good idea, but it 
makes the semantics clear):
  <A HREF="go_get_it.au">
     <A HREF="blah"...>This Page</A>
  </A>
conceptually would play go_get_it.au whilest the" blah" page is being 
fetched.  Nested anchors have insurmountable problems, but perhaps 
some multimedia nesting might be allowed.

Going even further, it might be nice to allow an audio clip to play 
when the mouse moves over an anchor, if the browser is set for it.  
Then someone somewhat  visually impaired might be able to successfully navigate 
through pages based upon the attached audio.

Perhaps this functionality could be achieved, not by nesting, but by 
allowing other attributes:
   <A HREF="blah" CLICK_AUDIO="go_get_it.au" DESCR_AUDIO="desc.au">
  ....

***********************************
I can imagine (especially given the traffic on this list) that many 
extensions to HTML will be possible, and reasonable.  Would 
it not be a good idea to allow for some dynamic extensions, in which, 
in an HTML document, one could inform HTML interpreters (perhaps in 
interpreter-specific format) how to process extensions used in the 
document?

E.G.:
    #+netscape
           <A CLICK_AUDIO="param">  := appropriate click_audio code(param)
   #+mosaic
           <A CLICK_AUDIO="param">  := ...

This kind of bootstrapping might be very hard to implement, and might 
lead to all kinds of ad-hoc and annoying HTML,  but it would afford a 
kind of generality which would be extremely useful given the dynamic 
nature of the language.

(maybe I should just start writing JAVA code.)

Bryan Bentz

Bryan A. Bentz     H: (617) 932-7940   bentz@ai.mit.edu
T.H.I.             W: (617) 932-8233
6 Gately Drive     
Woburn, MA 01801
URL: http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bentz/bentz.html

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Received on Wednesday, 13 March 1996 17:36:17 UTC