Ian Hickson wrote:
One of the patterns I've seen a lot while looking at big sites is this:
<a href="record?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffoo.example.com/"> Foo </a>
...where "redirect" is a CGI script that records that the user followed
the link, and that then redirects the user to the real page (potentially
setting a cookie in the process).
This is used for four main reasons:
1. Improving sites, by getting data regarding how users use the site.
2. Keeping track of which adverts were clicked on, for book-keeping.
3. Improving services, e.g. by offering a number of options, checking
which the user picked, and making that one be the first on the list
the next time the user uses the service.
4. Uniquely identifying and tracking a user for evil purposes.
Sometimes more than one of the above is done, e.g. clicking on adverts
sometimes informs the publisher and the advertiser before moving the user
to the real destination.
The problem at the moment is that the redirect mechanism obscures the
eventual target URI. It would be good to have the target URI separate
from the tracking URIs, so that the UA can show each of them separately in
the UI, indicating the user who is getting told what.
Doing this would also allow the UA to easily turn off the pinging thing
for users who are worried about point 4 above.
Bearing the above in mind, I've added a section to the <a> element that
describes a ping="" attribute. The URIs given in this attribute would be
followed when the user clicks the link, thus getting around the problems
listed above.
Now, because of number 4 above, I'm guessing this is going to be
controversial, which is why I'm calling this out explicitly (as opposed to
waiting til I've filled in all the TBW sections and then just asking for a
general review, since people might miss it if I did that).
Thoughts? Is it evil?
http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#ping
It's not evil in and of itself, but it won't ever be useful. Anyone who
just finds themselves curious won't be able to use it reliably for at
least 10 years, because of internet explorer. Anyone who actually
_needs_ to know won't ever be able to use it, because it's easily
disableable. Even in controlled environments where that can all be
standardized it won't be useful, because in a controlled environment you
can get most of that information easily anyway.
I do like the semantics of it. I like how it separates two things
(linking and link tracking) which really should be separate. But I don't
think it will work, and I think it should be removed in favor of some
future idea that will work (if one is even possible).
--
dolphinling
<http://dolphinling.net/>