Re: Comments URI Proposal

Ian Hickson wrote:

>What exactly does "colophon" mean?

A colophon is an end note telling about the technical aspects of the work.
In books, this often includes information about the typefaces used. Wired
has a more colorful colophon toward the end of each issue.

>My only worry is that using this system results in an unpleasant experience
>to the many many people who use older, non-css browsers, since they don't
>hide the "experts-only" comments.

There's going to be a serious divide between HTML 3.2 browsers (essentially
NS/IE 3.0- and most other browsers) and CSS-capable browser for at least
the next year or two. Dealing with the backwards-compatibility issues is
one of my biggest headaches with trying to roll out CSS sites.

Consequently, I hope that if a colophon is implemented that it's done in a
way to avoid the sort of problem Ian describes. Putting an HREF instead a
comment tag is a bit unpredictable, so perhaps a colophon tag should use an
an alternate way of specifying an HREF so that older browsers won't
recognize the tag and therefore ignore it.


George Olsen
Design Director/Web Architect                          mailto:golsen@2lm.com
2-Lane Media                                              http://www.2lm.com
vox 310/473-3706 x2225                                      fax 310/473-6736

Received on Wednesday, 4 March 1998 17:27:02 UTC