[whatwg] validate attribute in <A>

[Mike Hoye]

Note: This is a duplicate of a post that's waiting for approval, because
I sent it from the wrong address. Fat head error?


Hi, all. I hope this hasn't been proposed before, but if it is my
googlage is failing me. My proposal is for the addition of a "validate"
attribute to the the <a> element that would let the client verify the
content of a link as it comes in, and either put up a warning, a choice
or just silently drop the incoming data, depending on a user preference.

The validate attribute would describe an algorithm to employ and a result
to compare it to; for example, somebody downloading the en-US version
of FF 1.5 from the Mozilla.com homepage could click on a link like

[a href="http://foo.com/mozilla-i686.tgz"
 validate="{md5}b63fcdf4863e59c93d2a29df853b6046"]

and the client could verify as it comes in that it does at least have
the md5sum that's advertised.  User notifications could include "no
validation", "successfully validated" and "failed validation", and act
according to the user's wishes in each case.

Please let me know what you think.

- Mike Hoye

-- 
"Grumble, stumble, kitchen, bacon, yo."  - Geoff Seaborn