[Whatwg] Request for HTML-only print link

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 03:41 +0200 UTC, on 2007-07-29, Sander wrote:

[... bother user with diff between print link and built-in print]

> But a lot of users just don't know their browser and they just don't really
>bother to learn
[...]
> That may be the case for those who have visited this site of yours (sorry
>;-) ). I'm sure most won't even consider that there may be a difference. And
>if there is a difference that should be made clear.

To users who you just defined as unwilling to learn file->print? Good luck ;)

[...]

> There are some differences with your mp3 example compared to a print link:
> The mp3-link always refers to a different file, whereas a print link
>(mostly) refers to the current file.

I meant to suggest that it doesn't have to. Your argument that it's good to
provide a link to "what you're talking about" seemed to have some merit. So
then I was thinking hard if there would ever be any need at all to have a web
page talk to the user about printing it. The only case I could think of was
the "We suggest you print this purchase confirmation" one. Taking your
argument's merit into consideration, I then suggested that "We suggest you
print <a href=URL>this purchase confirmation</a>" would solve that problem.
(The link could point to a resource containing only the purchase confimation.)

> So, sticking to the given example,
>you're probably already on the page with the purchase confirmation.

So you ignore the silly author and hit Cmd-p ;)

[... some markup examples]

> More important, the mp3-file has a different extension that can trigger a
>media player to play the file or the browser downloading it.

File name extensions don't trigger anything. On the Web their only 'meaning'
is to make IE think it knows what it's receiving. What matters is the MIME
type (provided though Content Type headers). But they too "trigger" nothing.
They just provide information. The actual trigger is the user and that
includes what his browsing environment does with the resource. (The MP3 may
be loaded and played inline, in an external app, saved to the file system, or
whatever else the user finds useful.) Neither the file, it's name, it's MIME
type or the link to it "do" or "trigger" anything.

> For print
>there's no such thing. If there was, that should probably be enough.

The point was that with the markup examples I gave, the links point to
resources (as someone else pointed out, that's what URLs are all about, after
all), instead of acting as if they are widgets to activate a function.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>