Re: Deriving meaningful conventions

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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9308041012.AA08243@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Deriving meaningful conventions
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 93 11:12:12 BST
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Status: RO

Nathan Torkington says:

> CONTINUITY
>   I think a standard menu at the end works well for this, containing:
>  -- a link to the previous page
>  -- a link to the next page
>  -- a link to the top of the current semantic level
>  -- a link to the previous semantic level (section/chapter/book)
>  -- a link to the next semantic level
>  -- a link to the very start

And goes on to suggest:

> For instance,

>        <H1>Navigation</H1>
>
>        Select an option from the list below:
>        <UL>
>        <LI> <A HREF="2-4.html">Go to the previous section</A>
>        <LI> <A HREF="2-6.html">Go to the next section</A>
>        <LI> <A HREF="2.html">Go to the start of this chapter</A>
>        <LI> <A HREF="1.html">Go to the start of the previous chapter</A>
>        <LI> <A HREF="3.html">Go to the start of the next chapter</A>
>        <LI> <A HREF="home.html">Go to the start of the book</A>
>        </UL>

I would like to suggest that people use the LINK tag (in HTML+) for this
purpose. This allows the browser to put such links on a toolbar or menu
which is available no matter which part of the current document you are
looking at, in other words, you can't scroll the navigation menu away.

This approach also has the benefit of allowing browsers to behave more
intelligently when printing documents out. In the HTML+ spec, I also
show how these links can be defined *IMPLICITLY* rather than having to
include them with every document.

Thanks to Nathan for an excellent analysis of link types.

Dave Raggett