Re: Proposed HTML ping attribute

On Tue, Jan 15, 2008 at 02:38:51PM -0800, L. David Baron wrote:
>  (1) how much tracking currently done using redirects and/or script
>      would be converted to <a ping>? (an improvement)

Most tracking is done using HTTP redirects:

  http://a.example.com/clickthrough?uri=http://b.example.com/

>  (3) what are the relative magnitudes of the improvement of
>      switching from redirects and/or script to <a ping> vs the
>      worsening of doing more tracking?

These URIs become a lot more meaningful for clients without having to
dereference them to follow the HTTP redirect.

> Does this introduce anything that form.submit() can't already do?

> Considering that script can already do lots of things when a user
> clicks a link (including send pings), having such user interface
> already requires solving the halting problem.

Sure, it is possible to capture DOM events, send a HTTP request and
then redirect the user to the target.

Unfortunately, this:

 a) is complex,
 2) clumsy and
 d) requires scripting

This is based on my experience tracking "clickthrough" on
http://www.ebuyer.com/, a large ecommerce site, and should in no way
be taken as my support for the proposal.

Thanks,

-- 
Noah Slater <http://bytesexual.org/>

"Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as
society is free to use the results." - R. Stallman

Received on Wednesday, 16 January 2008 00:11:25 UTC