Re: HTML+ and browser functionality

Tony Sanders <sanders@bsdi.com>

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Errors-To: sanders@bsdi.com
Errors-To: sanders@bsdi.com
Message-id: <9306292147.AA06123@austin.BSDI.COM>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: HTML+ and browser functionality 
In-Reply-To: Dave_Raggett's message of Tue, 29 Jun 93 15:31:58 BST.
Errors-To: sanders@bsdi.com
Reply-To: sanders@bsdi.com
Organization: Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 16:47:29 -0500
From: Tony Sanders <sanders@bsdi.com>

> Urh, whats wrong with the LINK element, e.g.
> 
>         <LINK rel="up" href=...>
>         <LINK rel="prev" href=...>
>         <LINK rel="next" href=...>
> 
> The links specified with the LINK tag are assumed to be global to the
> entire document and so could be automatically added to a menu or toolbar.

I want something like this, maybe not this syntax but the semantics:

<HEAD>
    <TITLE>document</TITLE>
    <LINK rel="up" href=...>
    <LINK rel="prev" href=...>
    <LINK rel="next" href=...>
</HEAD>
<NAV>
    <A REF="up"><IMG SRC="/img/up.gif"></A>
    <A REF="prev"><IMG SRC="/img/prev.gif"></A>
    ...
</NAV>

This lets you specify how the navigation panel looks so the browser doesn't
have to grok special link relationships (up, prev, next) for this purpose.
I think this is a big win because if you hardcode up,prev,next that will
pretty much squelch any development on new navigation models.  I want to
be able to pop up a compass rose for navigating map data, or the image of
a book to turn pages etc.  Each class of document has it's own navigation
needs and I think hardcoding this in the browser is a bad idea.  This
could be done with having a bunch of rel attributes and having the browser
select the look based on the available LINK's but I don't think anyone
is likely to implement that and it still doesn't let you create nav's on
the fly.  I don't have the "solution" I'm just presenting the problem
that I would like to solve (dynamic nav panels).

Is anyone else interested in being able to build the look of the
navigation panel on the fly?  This could mesh quite nicely with
the LINK rel stuff if done right.

--sanders