[whatwg] A thought: <a href="..." method="post">

[Kornel Lesinski]

On Fri, 13 May 2005 16:56:44 +0100, James Graham <jg307 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> That seems to be based on the belief that all things which look like  
> links must correspond to idempotent actions.

Yes, that is exactly the idea behind it.

> I don't think this is true and, in general, think that trying to couple  
> the user interface to the underlying protocol is a bad idea.

That is user interface which represents what protocol does.

Links are not coupled with http GET method. You may link to any resource  
using any protocol, but following a link should not have side-effects - by  
design.

Web applications usually don't have undo, so IMHO it should be clear that  
click on certain UI elements has side effects.

Difference between radio buttons and checkboxes is quite clear by looks of  
them. There should be difference between links and buttons as well,  
because one _goes_ somewhere, and another  _does_ something.


In case with marking e-mail as read that would be element that _goes_  
somewhere AND _does_ something, so I think that <a> might be suitable in  
this case.


How about requiring non-idempotent links to have rel="nofollow"? That  
might solve the "google accelerator problem".

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesinski