- From: Abigail <abigail@tungsten.gn.iaf.nl>
- Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 00:40:11 +0100 (MET)
- To: bentz@ai.mit.edu
- Cc: www-html@w3.org
You, Bryan A. Bentz wrote: ++ ++ 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. Beside the SGML difficulties, what is the point? First of all, it does add to the logical markup of the document; if this has a place on the web, it ought to be in a style sheet. Secondly, sound files tend to be large, much larger than text. I think downloading the sound file takes longer than "This Page" in most cases... ++ 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. *shiver* `Drink Foobar', `Eat more wombles'. No thanks, I'd rather hear the music I am playing than all kinds of djingles from the Web. I don't think such bells and whistles belong in HTML. ++ ++ 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"> ++ .... Can't we have something useful? Like <math>? Or even trivial things like <fn>, <ul plain>, <li src = "...">, etc; all proposed for about a year and only sparsely implemented? ++ *********************************** ++ 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. And just forget about device independence? Abigail -- <URL: http://www.edbo.com/abigail/> (Changed)
Received on Wednesday, 13 March 1996 18:40:08 UTC