[whatwg] META and bookmarking

[Roger Hågensen]

Add a link in the header and use rel=canonical which tells the browser 
that the link is the correct url.

If all modern browsers actually uses the canonical url when you bookmark 
a page I have no idea, ideally they should though. File a bug report 
with the browsers if they don't.

Do note that search engines consider a slightly different meaning for 
rel=canonical though.

I'm curious though why you do not want the users to bookmark the subpage 
but the portal page instead.

Maybe rethink the design so that the portal (aka landing page) actually 
does not auto redirect. Present a clickable image (href + image) that 
the user can click or tap on. That way they can bookmark the portal page 
before clicking onwards.

Also make sure the users can click a back button on the subpage to go 
back to the portal page (call it Index or Home or Portal or something).

If you do not control these subpages yourself (they are somebody elses 
sites) then no browser devs will ever let you hijack the bookmarking of 
those. In this case you have a Directory/Indexing/Portal site and the 
only solution is to wait for the user to click before you send them to 
the foreign site. That way they can bookmark the portal site.

If the destination url contains a referral id of sorts then it's the 
destination site's responsibility to remove it if it's single use.


I dare say that in the "majority" of cases if you are unable to do 
something on the web today it's because you are doing it the wrong way.
I say "majority" because there are bound to be cases where this is not 
true. But in your case you might need to re-evaluate the way you do the 
redirect.

Now, I haven't seen your portal site so I'm just making assumptions here 
so I apologise beforehand in case my assumptions are way off.

RH

On 2018-02-17 20:55, Andy Valencia wrote:
> The problem is if you like the site and decide to bookmark it--
> including a home screen bookmark on mobile.  You're off on
> a transient URL, which is not the right one to bookmark.  On
> a desktop browser you can go into the extended dialog and
> hand-modify the URL (some users could, others not so much).
> On mobile, it can be difficult--on some devices even impossible.
> ...
> Thanks,
> Andy Valencia

-- 
Unless specified otherwise, anything I write publicly is considered 
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Roger Hågensen,
Freelancer, Norway.