On my interactive weather browser
(http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather/interactive.html) I have both a search field
(isindex) and a ismap image. When you first enter the page the following ismap
reference is attached to the map:
http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather/interactive.html?nodisp
When a user clicks on the map the Mosaic for X browser submits this query:
http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather/interactive.html?nodisp?x,y
A small program peel's off the "nodisp" field and the "x,y" field. If the x,y
isnt present nothing special happens. If it is present, and the nodisp field
is present the current textual weather information for the location is
returned.
When a user enter's a search, the query is sent to the server using this url:
http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather/interactive.html?search_query
Which is then peel'd off by the same small little program and attached to the
ismap reference like so:
http://rs560.cl.msu.edu/weather/interactive.html?search_query
so when the user clicks on the map I can peel off the search_query (which
specifies a display name) and draw the user a map for the given x,y
coordinates. Its apparent that this is achieved by a small quirk in Mosaic for
X that allows me to remember search queries between mouse clicks. However,
several browsers do not do the same thing, notably Mosaic for Mac. There is
also no special characters I can embed at the end of the URL that the server
will ignore, that I can use to remember previous actions. So guys, whats the
solution here? Is what im doing un-doable? All comments appreciated!
-Crh
Charles Henrich Michigan State University henrich@crh.cl.msu.edu
http://rs560.msu.edu/~henrich/