Re: Future browsers...

Sebastian Francis Heath <sfsh@rome.classics.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1993 17:40:33 -0500 (EST)
From: Sebastian Francis Heath <sfsh@rome.classics.lsa.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Future browsers...
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Message-id: <Pine.3.87.9311201733.B12159-0100000@rome.classics.lsa.umich.edu>
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Two things I would like to see:

In other hypermedia applications I have worked on, it has been useful to 
allow users to select any text and initiate a link from it.  This allows, 
for example, a user to select a word s/he doesn't understand and ask that 
it be looked up in a dictionary/glossary  or a site name can be looked up 
in an atlas.  This is allowed on the "Perseus 1.0: INteractive 
sources and Studies on Ancient Greece" CD-ROM.  The interface on that 
version is not the model for how things should be done, just one 
implementation.  Could there be an "<ISSELECTABLE>" tag with an 
"action=" attribute that made use of the existing htbin architecture?  
When this tag is present a "Link on Selection" button could appear 
somewhere on the page.  Obviously this is not just a client side change.


The second request may seem to go against the spirit of the web.  I would 
like to put Mosaic clients in a museum public gallery.  This is 
unrealistic with the existing set of actions that the current clients 
support.  I do not want users to be able to quit, open new windows, close 
existing ones, open any URL, etc.  On X servers, resizing windows can be 
controlled by the window manager.  The mac and windows? client would need to 
support window type choices.  What would people think of a public 
access/kiosk version of the client?  

-Sebastian Heath