Re: Ok, here's my suggestion...

My  $0.02 :

I agree that such a tag would be useful, and that maybe the ALINK tag could
be renamed. However I actually like the way the tags change colour when your
mouse moves over them with the ALINK tag, so think it is useful too. Maybe
it should be called 'ONLINK'.

Matt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Maury Markowitz" <maury@sympatico.ca>
To: <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2000 12:53 PM
Subject: Ok, here's my suggestion...


>   Thanks for all the encouragement to date.  This one is pretty trivial,
but
> I still think it's one worth dealing with.
>
>   I recently re-did my site and include a "index" down the left side (as
so
> many do - but I did avoid frames!). I noticed that one of the tags I
> inserted did not seem to be working, ALINK. My custom colors for LINK and
> VLINK were definitely working fine, but the page you were on at the time
was
> definitely not coming up in ALINK color.
>
>   Now of course all the long-timers here will recognize this newbie
mistake
> (and chuckle in some cases).  But the issue is why does ALINK do something
> utterly unlike what it's name implies, and why is HTML missing this
terribly
> obvious and useful feature?  Here's the way I look at it...
>
> LINK = links you haven't visited
> VLINK = links you have Visited
> ALINK = "active link" = the link you are currently on
>
>   Instead ALINK does something totally unexpected. ALINK actually means
"the
> color of the link when the mouse button is held down on top of it".  I'm
not
> even sure this is of much use, nor can I fathom how they came up with the
> name, or for that matter why they included it as a tag at all.
>
>   So essentially my suggestion is for a tag that does what I think a _lot_
> of people would want, one that changes the color of the link of the page
you
> are on to a set color.  For argument, let's call this TLINK for "this
link".
>
>   As it is I, and all the other designers out there with similar pages,
need
> to edit every page and change the color/style/image of the link to the
> current page by hand.  This is a time consuming and error prone business
> that could easily be automated.
>
>   In keeping with replies to my former message:
>
> a) this adds lots of value for a subset of users/designers for almost zero
> cost
> b) it degrades pefectly well - it's ignored
> c) this isn't about physical layout
> d) it should work fine under the XHTML as well
>
>   Thanks for listening!
>
> Maury
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 16 February 2000 22:20:21 UTC