On Jan 6, 2005, at 11:12 AM, Daniel Fagerstrom wrote:
How much work you should spend in creating "cool" URLs in your webapp, varies of course from application to application. I just wanted to point out that we can do more than 123456.cont if we want to. I have used more than one webapp that goes through many "transactions" during use, but force me to start the navigation from some start screen if my session expires. At least I would found such applications more userfriendly if they had used "cooler" URIs.
What do you mean by "transactions"? If the "transaction" is only "committed" to the Session then once the session expires there is no going back no matter how cool the URI. If the "transaction" is committed to persistent storage then continuation is possible. However, using flow to achieve this is dubious at best. Once such a transaction is completed it seems wiser to use sendPage and if more control is needed to pass it to a different function and create a new continuation hierarchy. If a user can return to a site days latter and continue where they left off its likely that the same URI from which they started will be the one they use to continue, with the business layer determining where they should start. The simple case would be an single page form that can be saved at any point. A more complex case would be an eLearning or testing application where each request requires the users place to be saved. In both cases we are talking of a single resource that is controlled in the business layer and not in flow. In such applications the use of flow is simply to mediate between the presentation and the model; i.e. validate input or display a reading selection and then present questions to be answered.
No matter how cool the URI, its the application that determines the user friendliness. If you're session expired you will have to log in or have a cookie with your data to continue where you left off. Whether each page has a unique URI is unimportant as long as the application is smart enough to know where you left off.
On a related note, the idea of using 123456.cont as part of a URI that a user can see is SOOO UNCOOL. Hide these things in forms so a user will never see them. Once a user enters a flow that should be the last and only URL they see in the address bar until they exit flow and/or choose to move to a new resource.
Holding such a view as to how and when to use flow allows cool URLs since the resource essentially is a flow function that controls user interaction with the model; in other words a mini-application.
The point is as things currently stand cool URLs are possible even considering flow.
If you think that reusable URLs is a good idea, not only in publishing oriented sites but in webapps as well, you will need to have more external URLs and your webapp will get more in common with publishing oriented sites.
URL wise there is no reason for them to be different, at least from a user perspective. Further, there never was. I don't see the need to have more external URIs, I just better designed web applications. The resource is the application not an individual page the application presents.
To my mind what a tree based sitemap buys is a better model of the site as application (publication or webapp). Because of that it just might lead to cooler URLs but not guarantee it.
Glen Ezkovich HardBop Consulting glen at hard-bop.com http://www.hard-bop.com
A Proverb for Paranoids:
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
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