LINK REL=ICON and other absurdities

Benjamin C. W. Sittler (bsittler@prism.nmt.edu)
Mon, 24 Jul 1995 14:10:42 -0600

This may be much too rendering-specific, but I'll propose it anyhow...
what about a LINK REL=Icon? It would point to an image used to represent
the current document graphically... i.e. a company logo for that company's
homepage. This would allow users to maintain graphical hotlists if their
browsers were capable of it, and could also be used to represent the web
browser when minimized in a window system like X.

This introduces another issue: should LINKs have an MD (checksum)
attribute? That way one could verify that the company logo (perhaps on
another machine) hasn't been replaced without the user knowing. (i.e.,
make sure pranksters haven't messed with the linked document and warn the
user if they have.)

And finally, one *more* attribute: perhaps LINK should have an ARG
attribute (ViolaWWW did this for specifying window width for sidebars)
that has no defined purpose, except to supply more information than the
REL/REV or HREF attributes. For example, one might wish to tell a certain
browser to automatically follow the "Next" LINK if no hyperlink has been
selected after a given time period. This could be specified with

<LINK REL=next TITLE="Next Tourist Trap" MD=4H37FAB3
ARG="warn=70;follow=60">

The "follow=60" ARG command would tell the browser to automatically follow
the link after 60 seconds of inactivity. The "warn=70" would effectively
disable the browser's warning method (i.e. ringing a bell). If it were
changed to "warn=50", the browser would somehow warn the user that the
LINK is about to be followed ten seconds before it automatically jumps to
the NEXT document.

(Oooops, I omitted the HREF="xxx". PRetend it's there, Ok?)

-- 
Benjamin C. W. Sittler
   "I have great confidence in fools -- self confidence my friends call it."
                            --Edgar Allen Poe
mailto:bsittler@nmt.edu                               http://nmt.edu/~bsittler/