Re: XHTML

On Wed, 19 May 1999, Luther Andal wrote:

> My suggestion is for an Anchor like tag that allows you to do a post
> instead of a get.

The main problem is that the code would not work at all on older
browsers.

> This would help imensely in Session and Hidden field transmission and
> the other hundred times that a form is not really practice or it would mess up
> the look and feel.

I agree that the functionality of a link corresponding to POST
submission is often asked for. However, it's not a good idea to
add features to HTML just for the look & feel (which should be
handled in CSS)

> <A HREF="http://www.w3c.org" METHOD="post">
>      <IMG SRC="http://www.w3c.org/images/image1.gif">
>      <PARAMETER NAME="field1" VALUE="value1">
>      <PARAMETER NAME="field3" VALUE="value2">
> </A>

On "older" browsers, including all browsers currently in use
(which will stay in use for some years), this would be
handled as if the METHOD attribute and the PARAMETER elements
were not present. That means it fails, since a _GET_ request
would be sent, without the fields you're trying to include. 

A better approach IMHO is to use a FORM element, so that the page
works on older browsers too, and consider the ways in which the
presentation could be improved in a case where the form content
is just hidden fields and a submit button. It's a matter 
of extending _CSS_ (not HTML) by some possibilities of suggesting
that such a form be presented in a manner similar to that of
text links, for example. (Perhaps there's something for that
in CSS2 already, just waiting to get implemented.)

-- 
Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/ or http://yucca.hut.fi/yucca.html

Received on Thursday, 20 May 1999 08:09:36 UTC