[Widgets] Autodiscovery

Hi,
   The current draft defines that rel="alternate" should be used for 
autodiscovery of widgets [1].  I think that is a mistake because a 
widget isn't necessarily an alternate representation of the document. 
In fact, in most cases, it won't be.  Consider a site like Apple's 
Dashboard widget download page [2], which lists many widgets for 
download, none of which are alternatives of that page.

I propose that a new "widget" value be defined for that purpose instead.

<link rel="widget" type="application/widget"
       href="/example.widget" title="An Example Widget">

I also think the value should be allowed on <a> elements as well, and 
autodiscovery should work for such links.  Since authors are usually 
going to include a link to the widget somewhere in the page, it's 
redundant to require that each one also be specified

<a href="/example.widget" rel="widget">An Example Widget</a>

The value also makes the use of the type attribute optional, since UAs 
can just recognise the widget value.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-widgets-20061109/#autodiscovery
[2] http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Friday, 24 November 2006 08:03:57 UTC