"Why can't there be a meta tag to TURN IT ON instead of turn it off. Isn't that what meta tags are for? To give browsers extra information?
Retrofitting the entire internet IS NOT going to make friends. This should be more of an opt-in than an opt-out. They're assuming that by default, everyone wants to participate when the exact opposite is probably true."
I completely agree. I'm webmaster for many different sites and most of them consist of loose collections of pages, not ones with server-side included headers and footers, which means I'd have to go through and insert this tag into somewhere around 2300 pages. Granted, probably about 500 of those pages could be changed in a couple of minutes by changing my header files, but that still leaves me around 1800 pages to insert this tag into. This is not something I want to do, and not something my employer should have to pay me to do. Maybe everyone who has to insert said tag into their web pages should send Microsoft a bill for the time it takes us all to research and implement ways of stopping it on our pages.
I have a feeling I'm not the only person who doesn't want this "interactive" feature turned on by default. I don't need email from people asking me why there are broken links on my websites when they aren't links that I put in in the first place. This is also something I'd have to remember to put into every page I made from then on. I code a majority of my pages by hand using vi, which means I'll have to remember to include this META tag, using the proper syntax in every page or I get things I don't want. As I recall, the html specs for a minimal page say nothing about requiring a META tag to turn off features.
"HTML lets authors specify meta data -- information about a document rather than document content -- in a variety of ways."
What information is being conveyed? Additional tags the author of the web page didn't put in in the first place? Is this something the author perhaps left out intentionally?
My last point is this: When I go to amiga.com, I don't want to see Microsoft's choice of links from its pages. I think that's somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the Amiga.;-)
Flame away if you want, but remember this: I'm just stating my opinion, and not intentionally saying anyone else's opinions are wrong. Unless you work for Microsoft, and are part of this harebrained scheme. In that case, if and when smart tags come along I'll switch to Opera or Mozilla and encourage others to do so as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a feeling I'm not the only person who doesn't want this "interactive" feature turned on by default. I don't need email from people asking me why there are broken links on my websites when they aren't links that I put in in the first place. This is also something I'd have to remember to put into every page I made from then on. I code a majority of my pages by hand using vi, which means I'll have to remember to include this META tag, using the proper syntax in every page or I get things I don't want. As I recall, the html specs for a minimal page say nothing about requiring a META tag to turn off features.
It describes the META tag like this: What information is being conveyed? Additional tags the author of the web page didn't put in in the first place? Is this something the author perhaps left out intentionally?
My last point is this: When I go to amiga.com, I don't want to see Microsoft's choice of links from its pages. I think that's somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the Amiga.
Flame away if you want, but remember this: I'm just stating my opinion, and not intentionally saying anyone else's opinions are wrong. Unless you work for Microsoft, and are part of this harebrained scheme. In that case, if and when smart tags come along I'll switch to Opera or Mozilla and encourage others to do so as well.