Re: A BACKUP HTML tag

Dirk Herr-Hoyman (hoymand@gate.net)
Mon, 24 Apr 95 13:55:54 EDT

>Dirk Herr-Hoyman <hoymand@gate.net> wrote:
>>I would like to propose a new HTML tag that addresses a user interface
>>problem I am seeing. I would like to see <BACKUP> (or the moral
>>equivalent) be used to display a link that causes a Web browser to backup
>>to the last visited page.
>
>A better approach would be to allow this as a special type of URL, so
>that normal HREFs could be used. This does not require any changes to
>the spec's, and will parse without problem in current browsers. Note
>that it will not perform as expected in current browsers, beyond
>telling them that they don't understand the "browser:///back"
>protocol.
>
Why is this a better solution? This would require registering a URL, which
requires changes to that spec. This would not be any easier to implement
in the browser. Indeed, it implies a change to the wwwlib stuff, which I
would not like to see.

>An even better solution to all this is the use of LINK to allow
>documents to add buttons to a doc-specific button-bar. That is, after
>all, why they are there.
>
But, this does not give any latitude to the placement of such a button on
the page. In many instances, you will want such a button to be in a very
specific place, not just at the top or the bottom in a button bar. If we
are going to bother doing this, I'd want to see a generalizable solution,
something that could be used for other browser specific functions. I could
see a general purpose tag, like <BROWSER TYPE=BACKUP> for specifying such
things, but again I want to be able to place this just SO.

Thanks for your comments!

--
Dirk Herr-Hoyman <hoymand@gate.net> |          I tried to contain myself
CyberBeach Publishing               |                                but
   * Internet publishing services   |                          I got out
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