Re: URI for current resources

roconnor@uwaterloo.ca <roconnor@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> I want to have a URL such as [for latest data].
> I [archive it], but all the bookmarks
> and links people have made from my original page will be pointing to the
> wrong file.
> 
> This seems like a problem to me.

Indeed, this a problem I believe many webmaster have struggled with. The
same problem affects PURLs and other sorts of locators. A large part of this
problem is the poor implementation of temporary redirects in browsers (which
treat them no differently than permanent redirects). The Content-Disposition
header might also be useful in such a situation, but I have never seen it
implemented either.

The simplistic solution, which most people I've seen fall back on is the use
of good old hypertext links. W3C specs have a header that includes latest
version, this version, previous version. Many weblogs have icons called
permalinks (often denoted by the text permalink or an asterisk (or some
similar symbol) after the entry) to deal with this problem. However, most
people who aren't webloggers will likely not understand this functionality.
It also seems unlikely that browser will fix these problems anytime soon, so
for now, hypertext seems the best bet.

Hope this helps,

(CC: Dan Brickley, because of our previous discussions on this subject.)

-- 
[ Aaron Swartz | me@aaronsw.com | http://www.aaronsw.com ]

Received on Saturday, 18 November 2000 18:38:42 UTC