One use case, from my point-of-view, was to allow for non-networked form submits
For example, if you had a computer or device that did NOT have a network connection, and you did not have (and did not want to have or cannot have) a local HTTP server running. Then you could use such a data URL to make things happen.
Also, with the use of data URL's for <img>'s, for <object>'s, and for <form>'s, you could have an entire HTML-based application contained in exactly one file.
Which is again useful in situations where you do NOT have network access.
Also, it is useful to have the entire HTML-based application contained in "one file" when you want to put it into some other XML document. (Like in RSS, Atom, or XMPP/Jabber.)
What really motivated me to think about it is that is that I was writing a blog post about how to create HTML e-mail signatures with hCards built into them.
I wanted to include a form to help them do this. The reader would fill in their name, e-mail address, etc, and it would generate HTML code they could use for their HTML e-mail signature.
However, I didn't want the form to make a request back to my server. (Because people could be reading this in their feed reader were they have the blog post cached from my feed.) I wanted it to be entirely self contained within the blog post.
So, as you mentioned, one solution is _javascript_. However, _javascript_ has a couple problem. #1: It complex. (Yes... I'm lazy :-) ) #2: Not all blog readers will allow the execution of _javascript_.
Also,... another reason against making a call on my server.... The blogging software I wrote works by having each blog post be a file. Each file is an Atom document. Not an Atom <feed> though. But an Atom <entry>. (And yes, it is legal to have an Atom <entry> as the root element.)
So having everything in one file is easier and simpler for me. (And again, yes, I'm lazy, and like things easy.) Preferably, I'd like to do <form>'s, <img>'s, and <object>'s with data URL's.
See ya
On 8/24/06, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:
>
> <form method="POST" action="" DATA URL HERE ###">
> <input type="text" name="given_name" />
> <input type="text" name="family_name" />
> <input type="submit" value="generate letter" />
> </form>
>
> How would you get the value of "given_name" and "family_name" into the
> data URL?
You can't, unless you use _javascript_, I think.
> What I want is something like...
>
> <form method="POST" action="" whom it may concern. My give name is
> '%%{given_name}' and my family name is '%%{family_name}'. Sincerely,
> %%{given_name} %%{family_name}">
Interesting. What's the actual use case? I hadn't really envisaged data:
being used for anything but debugging.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
charles @ reptile.ca
supercanadian @ gmail.com
developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
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