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Re: lynx-dev lynx2.8.3dev.4: "stubbing off hotlinks"???


From: Heather Stern
Subject: Re: lynx-dev lynx2.8.3dev.4: "stubbing off hotlinks"???
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 16:32:20 -0700 (PDT)

Me:
> > Will this still correctly handle my favorite way of stubbing off hotlinks
> > which have been brought to question:
> >     <A HREF="http://www.example.com/";>Example Widget Supply House</a>
> > becomes
> >     <A stub="http://www.example.com/";>Example Widget Supply House</a>
> > 
> > ...making it easy for me to reinstate the hotlink quickly when the issue
> > is resolved.
> > 
> > * Heather 

David:
> Heather, could you please explain, tutorially, what you are
> talking about above.  What does it mean to "stub off hotlinks"?
> And why would one want to do it?  etc.
> 
> Thanks!

Ok.  Let us suppose that one is maintaing a moderately complex website, but
not so complex that one is using scripts to autogenerate everything.  So it's
hand maintained.  However, descisions about what sort of content should be up,
what sort of sites are okay to link to, are a decision that belongs to someone
else, the webmaster just follows orders and sees that they become valid HTML.

So at some point in time in my example, a paragraph on this site mentions the 
above widget sales house.  For some reason, Management decides that they are 
not sure they would like this to be linked.  Maybe they want to link it, but
that site is under reconstruction, and they don't want to point at it while
it is messy.  Maybe the board of directors is investigating whether to enter
the widgets business themselves, so they don't want to point to a competitor,
only since they are not sure of this plan, they want to be able to link to it
after all should the decision go the other way.

In any case, the webmaster is faced with a desire to not wipe out the link and
have to re-type it later, but a need to delink it, quickly.  This is rather 
like leaving some sort of connector or "stub" at a junction or in a wall;
with the stub there, it's easier to put something on later.

Since I know that well behaved browsers ignore attributes they do not 
recognize, I find that if I change the 4 letter "HREF" to the also 4 letter, 
unknown attribute "STUB", that links turn off immediately, and are -very- 
easy to relink, without potentially conflicting with NAME or needing lots 
of typing to properly comment the code out SGML style -- after all, I don't 
want to abandon an </a> on the stack by accident.

I hope that helps...

* Heather

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