Multiple-Target Hyperlinks for the Masses

DukunSakti writes "For a long time people have talked about getting browser support for multilink feature. A multilink is a link that points to more than one targets. It's useful because many times a single target is not sufficient to describe a link. Wikipedia has numerous examples of acronyms and abbreviations that expand to more than one term. Well, I got sick of waiting, and so I wrote a plugin for the excellent Wiki application PmWiki that adds the multilink feature. This is fully supported under Mozilla Firefox, but only partially under Internet Explorer."

Comments

Neither "multi-target" nor "for the masses"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another Slashdot submission by an author whose creation doesn't even come close to living up to his hype....

In fact, it is seriously misleading. It's not a new innovation; it's just a DHTML popup menu, which many other people have already implemented, and far better. Better how? Well, DukunSakti writes:

This is fully supported under Mozilla Firefox, but only partially under Internet Explorer.

No, actually with his code it's not supported at all under Internet Explorer. All it does is set the "title" attribute in the <a ...> tag so that the user gets a useless tooltip that is a list of a bunch of URLs which cannot be copied or edited or clicked on, so doesn't support going to any of the links at all. Instead, clicking on the link goes to a page to edit the links in the Wiki. Far more people read wikis than edit them; this should not be what happens. Yes, you can then click through to them from the editing page, but we need a second page just to be a raw list of URLs? WTF? And even under Firefox, where the "multi-target hyperlink" feature supposedly works, you just get a popup list of raw URLs. How are you supposed to know what each of them is and which you should go to? That's why a normal, well-implemented menu has actual text, not just raw URLs.

Claiming that these are "multiple-target huperlinks for the masses," is quite inaccurate, considering that (unfortunately) 80%+ of people are still using Internet Explorer, and that for everyone else they are just presented as raw URLs. Essentially this makes this plugin completely useless. You can't ignore IE unless your wiki happens to be something like a Firefox support wiki. It's true that it's unfortunate that IE doesn't adhere to the web standards nearly as well as other browsers, but for now, the majority rules. There are plenty of web programmers who have found clever ways to do popup DHTML menus (which is all that this is) that actually work in both Firefox and IE; follow the link at the beginning of this post for a whole slew of them.

Re:Neither "multi-target" nor "for the masses"

[AKAImBatman]

Err... one bug fix:

popup.innerHTML = "";
for(var i=0; i<array.length; i++)
{
popup.innerHTML += "<div><a href="'+array[i]+'"></a></div>
}

Multiple first post

[huge]

Next: Slashdot featuring multiple first post.

small time story

[SolusSD]

this sure is a small time story for a website like slashdot. can i post up little odd-end hacks i've created? ;)

I like the old style

[cybersaga]

I'd rather use the old way of linking multiple pages.

Re:I like the old style

[cached]

All of those [slashdot.org]s next to your links make your post look more like subliminal advertising than it should.

That's great

[roman_mir]

Now /. readers will be able to /. not just one website with a single click, but many websites also with a single click.

And BTW, be careful of Jeff Bezos coming right after you for this obvious - Single Click Amazon IP violation.

Not IE compatible? Congrats, 80% ignores you.

[jleq]

I may not like Internet Explorer, but it's just plain imprudent to *not* support it.

My multilink plugin code adds full support for this feature to Firefox browsers, but only partially to any recent versions of Internet Explorer due to its CSS implementation shortcomings (full support may be upcoming if there is any users demand)

Uhhh... try 80% of all internet users? We're not going to get the average 'net user to switch to Firefox by pissing him/her off with incompatibilities. What happens when a media item that I want to watch is only available for realplayer? I don't watch it.

Better done in Markup

[kalidasa]

What we need is to add multilinking to XHTML, and get Mozilla, Safari, and IE to support it.

[a type='multilink' href='http://www.slashdot.org/defaultlinkfornon multilinkbrowsers']

[linkoption href='http://www.slashdot.org/firstlink' title='This is the first link']

[linkoption href='http://www.slashdot.org/secondlink' title='This is the second link']

[linkoption href='http://www.slashdot.org/thirdlink' title='This is the third link']

This is the text inside the link

[/a]

and have this appear as a small dropdown list below the link when you click the link.

Re:Neither "fish" nor "flesh"

[ear1grey]

For a long time people have talked about self promotion on Slashdot. Self promotion its like a press release and usually involves some pet project that would most likely dwindle quietly into obscurity, but instead, has a fleeting shimmering moment in which to be globally lambasted.

Dear editors...

[jlarocco]

Dear editors:
If Donald Knuth, Linus Torvalds, or some other famous developer submits an article about something cool they're making, people might care. But nobody cares about some dumbass' broken firefox plugin. The advertisements here are supposed to be the banner ads, not the articles.
Thank you.

This is useless.

[clandestine_nova]

Seriously, is it *that* slow of a news day? This hack is neither well-implemented nor does it have any real use. The example the author mentioned doesn't even make sense, because links are not, and never were, supposed to work like that - they don't make sense for multiple targets, as that is a page design decision, not a DOM decision. This so-called multi-linking is silly, semantically nonsensical, and simply adds bloat to otherwise clear pages.