- From: Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>
- Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 10:03:55 +0100
- To: Mark Birbeck <mark.birbeck@x-port.net>
- Cc: 'Beth Epperson' <beppers2@cox.net>, www-html@w3.org
Mark Birbeck wrote: > Anyway, there are plenty of solutions better than "nofollow", and ultimately > it's just daft to put a qualification on a link (which is what @rel is) that > says the type of this connection is that there is no connection. [ I removed w3c-html-wg@ crossposting; HTML WG members are supposed to follow ] [ the public list too anyway ] Plenty of solutions eh? I read everything and its contrary about this "nofollow" value for rel. I'd like to remind the readers of this thread a few facts: 1. nobody ever came up with a solution for the problem raised by Google, even a more complex one. 2. a solution is needed. And even if you disagree, that's a nice and harmless try. 3. the W3C's (X)HTML WG has placed HTML 4 in "errata mode" so no evolution of the spec, good or bad design, good or bad wording, good or bad idea, is likely to happen. Conclusion: you need to add something to HTML 4 and it's harmless to web browsers ? Do it! 4. legacy browsers just do NOT care about "nofollow" or any new rel/rev value. 5. when the HTML WG designed the rel/rev attibute, we had in mind only object-to-object references. But we're now more than SIX YEARS later. It's not totally crazy to say that the spec is outdated, that 2005 brought a new interesting server-side usage for this attribute. A standard is not something engraved in marble until the end of the universe. It's a living object, that needs corrections, extensions, with extinct portions and new proposals. With that in mind, and with my former HTML(4) WG member hat on, I see _nothing_ wrong in Google's extension. 6. blink or marquee are not only "poorly designed (...) elements" as Alexander Savenkov said , they are elements used by MILLIONS of pages in asian countries. We would all love to have in our products' basket a poorly designed object used by millions. 7. the word "nofollow"... aaaahhhh.... Keepers of The Temple, raise your hands. Think a few seconds about it : you're screaming for a word that you say does not fully represent what it means, added to a spec where A is at the same time the source and the target of a link, where LINK represents the same but inactively, where ADDRESS is not an address, where a list can be instantiated in two different element types, where there's a totally useless and semanticless element called BODY, etc. Please, give us a break about "nofollow"... Fantasai said that assigning a poorly-chosen name can lead to confusion. Because you think the vast majority of the world speaks english and will see a confusion where YOU, as an english speaker, see one? I am not a native english speaker, and trust me, Google could have used rel="foobar" that I would still find it clever - and funny :-) Please, all, don't be more royalist than the queen. </Daniel>
Received on Monday, 24 January 2005 09:04:03 UTC