The HTML specs provide the <LINK> tag within a document to enable web documents to describe their relationship to other documents on the site. (The relevant part of the specs is http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.3, if you're interested). These tags are excellent for helping a visitor who has been dropped firmly into the middle of a set of pages (usually as a result of a search engine reference) find their starting point, or else locate supplementary material, such as a glossary, without the need for full navigational aids to be supplied in the form of nav bars, etc. (Or even to supplement such aids that may be missing, such as when they are normally provided in additional frames, but missing because of the way the search engine threw the user into the middle of the site.)
Or, at least, they would be wonderful if browsers used them. So far, the only browser to make extensive use of these tags is Opera 7 under Windoze. No doubt, when it reaches v7 on the Mac, Opera will offer it there, too. Time, then, for Camino to steal a march on it, and have beforehand. (Though it won't be the first Mac browser to do it: iCab provides access to the <link> addresses through its Standard Links Toolbar.)
It would be nice to see access to these links in the form of both toolbar and navigation menu (iCab places its Standard Links Navigation menu within the Standard Links Toolbar, which is really stupid, as it makes it entirely redundant when the toolbar is present and inaccessible when it isn't!) Ideally, the menu should be part of the Go.. menu, I'd say.
One flaw that I would suggest both Opera and iCab have in their handling of the LINKS tags, however, is that they each provide only a standard set of links, utilising those values listed within the HTML 3.2 (I think) specs. My reading of those specs, however, is that the list was only ever meant to be a suggested sample list: I can see no reason why the 'rel' attribute should, in fact, be limited to those given there. I would argue that that view is borne out by the W3C validator, which pass as perfectly valid HTML (or XHTML) pages that contain links with additional rel values. So... my proposed links navigation menu needs to be fully dynamic, capable of accepting any rel setting from the document. With that in place, the days of having to build conveniently placed navigation menus on the pages themselves (with their screen real-estate overheads) could become a thing of the past. I am sure that this is what was envisaged when the rel links where first formulated: how nice it would be for Camino to be the first browser to implement it fully.
-Steve -- _______________________________________________ Camino mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mozdev.org/mailman/listinfo/camino
