Re: browser consistency [was: Agenda ]

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Wed, 12 Jul 95 12:36:54 EDT

A bit of a blast from the past here.

Dan:
>I think Terry Allen ended up in a
situation where he _had_ to put ISINDEX in the body for some reason
that I don't recall exactly -- something to do with a change in Mosaic
when FORMs were introduced.

Once, Mosaic displayed the search box in the frame, which is the
implementation I like and recommend. When Mosaic switched to
displaying the search box wherever the ISINDEX tag occurred,
an ISINDEX in HEAD turned up at the top of the page, which is the
most valuable real estate in the window. So I stuck the ISINDEXes
for the Whole Internet Catalog at the end of BODY instead, which
meant that if the page was longer than a screen the search boxes
weren't visible to the user when he first loaded the page.

>So there is something of a loophole: the "standard" version of the DTD
allows <ISINDEX> in the body, but the "recomended" version only allows
it in the head. The prose of the spec only describes the recommended
syntax.

Not quite right (and "`standard' version" is definitely the wrong
way to say it). The inclusion of ISINDEX in BODY is accomplished
through the HTML.Forms marked section, which can be toggled independently
of Recommended and Deprecated. If you allow FORMs, you allow ISINDEX
in BODY.

Regards,

-- 
Terry Allen  (terry@ora.com)   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
Editor, Digital Media Group    101 Morris St.
			       Sebastopol, Calif., 95472

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