Re: Feedback on the ping="" attribute (ISSUE-1)

Mark Baker wrote:
> So this is where we disagree.  I believe that the meaning of the
> message is defined by the intent of the user

If we're going to talk about user intentions, we have to accept the fact 
that most users have no idea how GET and POST differ, see no difference 
between clicking on a link and a button, and wouldn't be able to tell apart:


   <a href="http://www.example.com"
      style="color: black; text-decoration: underline">Click me</a>

  and

   <form action="http://www.example.com" method="POST">
     <input type="image"
            style="color: black; text-decoration: underline"
            alt="Click me">
   </form>

Try it in trunk Firefox, please.

So I don't think the user is putting any meaning into this message other 
than "Do whatever you're claiming will happen if I click this 
doohickey".  There's nothing magic about links that makes them 
idempotent or whatnot in users' eyes.  Same for forms.  What matters to 
users is not the mechanism (which they are not aware of anyway) but the 
context in which the mechanism appears.  For example, users would tend 
to assume (quite reasonably) that <a href="...">Make purchase!</a> is 
not idempotent.

In any case, as far as I can see the spec is concerned with the meaning 
of the ping message.  There is a separate concern, which is whether the 
user wants to be sending that message.  But that's a matter of deciding 
whether to send the ping at all, not of deciding how to send it.

-Boris

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2007 19:09:38 UTC