[whatwg] link by name instead of url

Eitan Adler eitanadlerlist at gmail.com
Wed Apr 28 02:45:40 PDT 2010


This is an idea I've had in my head for a while and I think it might
make an useful addition to HTML5 standard.
As this is just an idea I didn't work out all the details. I'm just
looking to see if this is something that might be accepted.

Use case 1:
A document author wants to provide a link to some site. This site has
multiple versions of the page depending on where you live (think
google.co.uk, google.co.hk, google.com etc)

Use case 2:
A document author wants to ask users to share his page via the users
preferred social network. Something like
Please <a href="http://facebook.com">tell your friends</a> about this site!

Use case 3:
A document author wants to provide a link to search for more
information on a preferred search engine.

I'd like to leverage the user's bookmarks in these cases by allowing
authors to specify markup like
case 1: <a goto="google">google</a>
case 2: <a goto="social-network">tell your friends</a>
case 3: <a goto="search">search!<a>

The UA would be responsible for determining which site to link to. A
href could be provided as a fallback for old browsers or for sites
where the user did not yet make a choice.



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