I absolutely agree that both credit and praise should be given to the folks that spent many years of efforts on thinking through and researching hyperlink systems. A lot of great ideas that should be incorporated not ignored.
I think the failure was timing, infrastructure, simplicity, political, processing power, and graphical capabiliites. All of these had to come together to make it truly happen in the 90's.
Unfortunately, the simplicity which made it able to grow so quickly is also what people have been trying to go back and fix over the last 10 years.
Excellent ideas, how do we get from here to there? I don't think I've seen anybody lay out a plan that would actually do that. Mostly, I've seen Ted whine about the web and people ignoring the good ideas.
The problem is larger than an individual site. Since the web is built on a distributed platform, solving broken links on the small is a good start, but not complete. External sites that have the link also need to corrected (whether an update, a delete, a move, etc.).
One way to extend this idea is to make use of the referrer: field in HTTP. I worked on an early prototype ('95-96 http://www5conf.inria.fr/fich_html/papers/P10/Over view.html) of this that would not only notify the local system administrator of a broken link, but also provided a facility to notify the administrator of the system from whence the request originated.
Automating this is difficult due to security issues, but it's a least worth somebody continuing to do research and finding ways to make things better, even if incrementally.
Not sure I like the idea of patenting this, but I do like the idea of people working on it.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely agree that both credit and praise should be given to the folks that spent many years of efforts on thinking through and researching hyperlink systems. A lot of great ideas that should be incorporated not ignored.
I think the failure was timing, infrastructure, simplicity, political, processing power, and graphical capabiliites. All of these had to come together to make it truly happen in the 90's.
Unfortunately, the simplicity which made it able to grow so quickly is also what people have been trying to go back and fix over the last 10 years.
Kipp
Excellent ideas, how do we get from here to there? I don't think I've seen anybody lay out a plan that would actually do that. Mostly, I've seen Ted whine about the web and people ignoring the good ideas.
Kipp
The problem is larger than an individual site. Since the web is built on a distributed platform, solving broken links on the small is a good start, but not complete. External sites that have the link also need to corrected (whether an update, a delete, a move, etc.).
r view.html) of this that would not only notify the local system administrator of a broken link, but also provided a facility to notify the administrator of the system from whence the request originated.
One way to extend this idea is to make use of the referrer: field in HTTP. I worked on an early prototype ('95-96 http://www5conf.inria.fr/fich_html/papers/P10/Ove
Automating this is difficult due to security issues, but it's a least worth somebody continuing to do research and finding ways to make things better, even if incrementally.
Not sure I like the idea of patenting this, but I do like the idea of people working on it.
Kipp