Link rel="start"

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Hi,
Is it better to write the
title of a Link rel="start" in the same language as the start page is or in
English?
For example
<LINK rel="start"
type="text/html"
href="schuhe-art-86.html"
title="1st page about shoes in German">
on this page in German
http://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/de/schuhe-art-86.html

Should the title be the same as the title of the page
http://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/de/schuhe-art-86.html
or give information about which kind of documents that page is the start
for
(for example 1st page about shoes in German) ?

Barbara de Zoete · Dec 17, 2004

Is it better to write the
title of a Link rel="start" in the same language as the start page is or
in English?

Keep your visitor in mind here. What language will s/he use? What language
will s/he expect to be able to use for your pages? Use that language.
BTW: I don't know is link rel="start" is well supported. I know link
rel="home" or link rel="index" are.

Should the title be the same as the title of the page

It can be, assuming you mean title in the head of the page and title as
appearing in the page itself. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. The
title in the head of the page serves more than one function. It appears in
the very top of the browser chrome (IE) or in the tabs (FF, OP) to show
your visitor where s/he's at. It also has a huge function for search
enginges such as Google to be able to tell what your page is about. The
title in the page itself is largely there for your human visitor, although
search engines do seem to pay attention to content that is marked up with
<h#> tags as header elements.

I usually have a different title in the head of my page than on the page
itself. For example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Example | An example page on titles for and in html
pages</title>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Example page on titles</h1>

<h2>Title in the head of an html page</h2>

<p>Some text here</p>

<h2>Title in the html page itself</h2>

<p>More text here</p>
</body>
</html>

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Barbara de Zoete said:
Keep your visitor in mind here. What language will s/he use? What language
will s/he expect to be able to use for your pages? Use that language.
BTW: I don't know is link rel="start" is well supported. I know link
rel="home" or link rel="index" are.

This kind of link is placed in the head of the html code and is used by
search engines, not by users as far as I understand
See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4.1
So, the question is which language search engines speak!!

It can be, assuming you mean title in the head of the page and title as
appearing in the page itself. It can be, but it doesn't need to be. The
title in the head of the page serves more than one function. It appears in
the very top of the browser chrome (IE) or in the tabs (FF, OP) to show
your visitor where s/he's at. It also has a huge function for search
enginges such as Google to be able to tell what your page is about. The
title in the page itself is largely there for your human visitor, although
search engines do seem to pay attention to content that is marked up with
<h#> tags as header elements.

See above

I usually have a different title in the head of my page than on the page
itself. For example:

<html>
<head>
<title>Example | An example page on titles for and in html
pages</title>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Example page on titles</h1>

<h2>Title in the head of an html page</h2>

<p>Some text here</p>

<h2>Title in the html page itself</h2>

<p>More text here</p>
</body>
</html>

See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4.1

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Luigi Donatello Asero said:
This kind of link is placed in the head of the html code and is used by
search engines, not by users as far as I understand
See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4.1
So, the question is which language search engines speak!!

Under
"Indicate the beginning of a collection "
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4.1

there is an example in English but it might be a coincidence.
Furthermore, I cannot see the actual page and then know which title it has
in the code.

Steve Pugh · Dec 17, 2004

The same as the page. If a user is browsing a German language page
then they will expect to see links in German, whether they appear as
part of the page or as part of the links toolbar.

This kind of link is placed in the head of the html code and is used by
search engines, not by users as far as I understand

No, they're used by users. The link toolbar is displayed in Opera,
Mozilla and Lynx, amongst others, and can be installed as an addon in
Firefox and IE.

See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4.1

Did you mean
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4 ?

I presume you're referring to the section headed "ndicate the
beginning of a collection". As far as I know no search engine does
that. But they might follow the link anyway.

So, the question is which language search engines speak!!

All of them. Badly.

Steve

Barbara de Zoete · Dec 17, 2004

This kind of link is placed in the head of the html code and is used by
search engines,

And by all who use Opera, Lynx, FireFox. Thus by me.

not by users as far as I understand

You understand wrong. Go hypnotise yourself, humming 'users, users, users,
users' for about fourty minutes. Search engines will love you if you write
and design with accessibility and usablitity in mind.

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Barbara de Zoete said:
And by all who use Opera, Lynx, FireFox. Thus by me.

You understand wrong. Go hypnotise yourself, humming 'users, users, users,
users' for about fourty minutes. Search engines will love you if you write
and design with accessibility and usablitity in mind.

I think you misunderstod me. I have navigation links for the users on the
site. So I write navigation links for the user and Link rel="start" for
search engines.
By the way, I do not think that most of the users visiting my website use
Opera, Lynx, FireFox. So, do you see such Link rel="start" if you use IE?
I suppose you do not.

Barbara de Zoete · Dec 17, 2004

I think you misunderstod me.

No I did not.

I have navigation links for the users on the
site. So I write navigation links for the user

So far so good.

and Link rel="start" for
search engines.

Here you go again. WRONG! *You*are*wrong* . One: don't write for search
engines. Do good for visitors, search engines will have no problem what so
ever indexing your site.

By the way, I do not think that most of the users visiting my website use
Opera, Lynx, FireFox. So, do you see such Link rel="start" if you use
IE?

You miss the point entirely. I do not use IE and with me milions of others
do not use IE. And with IE you can get an extension (IIRC) that displays
the pagemenu you build *for*visitors* with the link element in the head of
a page.

I suppose you do not.

But, never mind. Byebye,

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Steve Pugh said:
The same as the page.

Ok. I changed it.

Did you mean
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4 ?

I presume you're referring to the section headed "ndicate the
beginning of a collection".

Yes

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Barbara de Zoete said:
So far so good.

Here you go again. WRONG! *You*are*wrong* . One: don't write for search
engines. Do good for visitors, search engines will have no problem what so
ever indexing your site.

Did you read
"B.4 Notes on helping search engines index your Web site" ?
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4

I am trying to help them. You do not need do it, if you do not want to.

You miss the point entirely. I do not use IE and with me milions of others
do not use IE. And with IE you can get an extension (IIRC) that displays
the pagemenu you build *for*visitors* with the link element in the head of
a page.

How many people use this extension?

Jukka K. Korpela · Dec 17, 2004

Steve Pugh said:
The same as the page. If a user is browsing a German language page
then they will expect to see links in German, whether they appear
as part of the page or as part of the links toolbar.

Maybe. This language issue is a bit debatable, and fairly theoretical
at present. But if the current page and linked page are in the same
language, then it's difficult to find a reason why the title attribute
would have a different language. In principle, though, it is possible
that the current page is in German and the start page is in English. In
that case, I would write the title text in English (and use lang="en"
in the <link> element). The title text, if shown to user, would the act
as a clue to the fact that the destination is in English. But one might
also use a bilingual title text.

No, they're used by users.

By a small number of users, I would say, unfortunately.

The link toolbar is displayed in Opera,
Mozilla and Lynx, amongst others, and can be installed as an addon
in Firefox and IE.

It's unfortunate that the feature was stripped away from Firefox (and
it isn't "on" in Mozilla by default, if I remember correctly).

Worse still, rel="start" (which is semi-defined in the HTML
specification) is virtually unsupported, or worse. Both Opera and
Mozilla treat it as denoting the home (index) page of the site.
A "Top" or "Home" button is generated. This is not what the spec says:
according to it, rel="start" means the <link> "refers to the first
document in a collection of documents". The natural interpretation,
especially reading
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
is that this is meant to relate to a _sequential_ collection of
documents, e.g. corresponding to chapters of a book. To refer to a main
page, rel="contents" could be used, though the spec is vague.

Such confusion won't improve the popularity of using site navigation

I don't know if any search engine follows <link>s, but if they do
then they'll probably treat them as normal links.

Maybe. They _could_ use the better, though. I have no objection to
using theoretically useful markup if it does not have any known
drawbacks; it might become useful some day.

But in practical authoring, <link> is fairly irrelevant (except for
referring to external style sheets of course).

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 17, 2004

Jukka K. Korpela said:
Maybe. This language issue is a bit debatable, and fairly theoretical
at present. But if the current page and linked page are in the same
language, then it's difficult to find a reason why the title attribute
would have a different language. In principle, though, it is possible
that the current page is in German and the start page is in English. In
that case, I would write the title text in English (and use lang="en"
in the <link> element). The title text, if shown to user, would the act
as a clue to the fact that the destination is in English. But one might
also use a bilingual title text.

I wrote
<LINK rel="start"
type="text/html"
href="schuhe-art-86.html"
title="Italien - Schuhe - Artikel 86<">
<link rel="next" href="schuhe-artikel-1166.html"/>
<link rel="previous" href="schuhe-artikel-1168.html"/>

on
http://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/de/schuhe-artikel-1167.html

Should I write even the words "start" "next" "previous" in the code in
German?
If I did, the next question might be whether one should write words like
"body" in the html code in different languages.
I suppose that it should not work..

Worse still, rel="start" (which is semi-defined in the HTML
specification) is virtually unsupported, or worse. Both Opera and
Mozilla treat it as denoting the home (index) page of the site.
A "Top" or "Home" button is generated. This is not what the spec says:
according to it, rel="start" means the <link> "refers to the first
document in a collection of documents". The natural interpretation,
especially reading
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
is that this is meant to relate to a _sequential_ collection of
documents, e.g. corresponding to chapters of a book. To refer to a main
page, rel="contents" could be used, though the spec is vague.

Yes and I am trying to use it for a collection of shoes, so "start" does not
correspond to the home page, but only to the first page of such a
collection.

Jukka K. Korpela · Dec 18, 2004

Luigi Donatello Asero said:
<LINK rel="start"
type="text/html"
href="schuhe-art-86.html"
title="Italien - Schuhe - Artikel 86<">
<link rel="next" href="schuhe-artikel-1166.html"/>
<link rel="previous" href="schuhe-artikel-1168.html"/> - -
Should I write even the words "start" "next" "previous" in the code
in German?

Of course not. The rel attribute takes keywords as values, and the
keywords are part of HTML, though not a well-standardized part.

Attributes that are declared as %Text; in the DTD have expressions in a
human language as their values, and generally might be shown to users
and should therefore be written in the language used otherwise in the
document. There's nothing magic about the entity %Text; - syntactically
it means just CDATA, but in effect it contains a comment-like hint.

Other attributes, whether declared CDATA or NAME or something else,
generally take values that are strings formed according to some formal
rules.

However, in the special case of the rel attribute, using e.g.
rel="Anfang" would mean that browsers effectively treat "Anfang" as an
unrecognized keyword and might actually show it in a site navigation
menu they generate. This would not be very user-friendly, since
browsers generally present the _recognized_ keywords as _localized_
buttons in a site navigation menu. For example, on Mozilla (English
version), I would see
Top Up First Previous Next Last Document More
(with those entries greyed out that don't work because there's no
suitable <link> element in the document - and rel="start" activates
"Top")
with "More" as opening a pulldown menu with "anfang" (in all lower case
- Mozilla seems to normalize the values that way) as one item.

If I did, the next question might be whether one should write words
like "body" in the html code in different languages.

More or less, though it's a yet another level of being a "language".

- - I am trying to use it for a collection of shoes, so "start"
does not correspond to the home page, but only to the first page of
such a collection.

So your usage would correspond to the idea in the specification, but
hardly any browser implements it that way. Instead, I would see e.g.
a "Top" button in a site navigation menu. As an experienced user,
I _might_ realize that "Top" might mean either 'top' or 'start'.

David Dorward · Dec 18, 2004

I think you misunderstod me. I have navigation links for the users on the
site. So I write navigation links for the user and Link rel="start" for
search engines.

Don't. Write for the web instead. Almost all good markup will benefit both
users and robots trying to index your site. Make sure the markup is good
and *sane* - if it doesn't make sense to users, then its libel to have a
negative impact with search engines too.

By the way, I do not think that most of the users visiting my website use
Opera, Lynx, FireFox.

Maybe not today, how about tomorrow? Web browsers are replacing that OS
component at an increasing rate. (Although with that attitude it could be
that any of your visitors who make the switch decide that your site isn't
friendly enough and find an alternative).

So, do you see such Link rel="start" if you use IE?
I suppose you do not.

I'm pretty sure someone mentioned a plugin for it earlier that would expose
that functionality. Either way, designing for a browser is a mistake -
design for the web.

David Dorward · Dec 18, 2004

Luigi said:
Should I write even the words "start" "next" "previous" in the code in
German?

No, its code not prose.

If I did, the next question might be whether one should write words like
"body" in the html code in different languages.
Exactly.

Yes and I am trying to use it for a collection of shoes, so "start" does
not correspond to the home page

Given that, it might be wise to avoid it altogether.

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 18, 2004

David Dorward said:
<a> links are also used by search engines. Lots of things are used by search
engines, that doesn't stop them being used by users.

Don't. Write for the web instead. Almost all good markup will benefit both
users and robots trying to index your site. Make sure the markup is good
and *sane* - if it doesn't make sense to users, then its libel to have a
negative impact with search engines too.

Writing for the search engines too, does not mean that one does not write
for the users.
Thus, I do not share your opinion.

Maybe not today, how about tomorrow? Web browsers are replacing that OS
component at an increasing rate. (Although with that attitude it could be
that any of your visitors who make the switch decide that your site isn't
friendly enough and find an alternative).

We do not know either how long HTML will be used

I'm pretty sure someone mentioned a plugin for it earlier that would expose
that functionality. Either way, designing for a browser is a mistake -
design for the web.

I do not share your opinion.
I design for both. You may design only for the users if you want to.

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 18, 2004

David Dorward said:
Given that, it might be wise to avoid it altogether.

I do not share your opinion.
Some of you seem to suggest that one should design only for the user.
I prefer to design both for the user and for search engines.
Designing for the search engines as well helps users too, because they can
find my pages more easily.

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 18, 2004

Jukka K. Korpela said:
So your usage would correspond to the idea in the specification, but
hardly any browser implements it that way.

They may not do it but I am using it for search engines and the very title
of the source I quoted
"B.4 Notes on helping search engines index your Web site" ?
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
refers to "helping search engines".

Instead, I would see e.g.

a "Top" button in a site navigation menu. As an experienced user,
I _might_ realize that "Top" might mean either 'top' or 'start'.

If you click the key on the left with the label
Herrskor från Italien (38-48)
on the page
http://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/sv/herrskor-italien-art-1168.html
you open the first page of the collection I am talking about.

Luigi Donatello Asero · Dec 18, 2004

Luigi Donatello Asero said:
They may not do it but I am using it for search engines and the very title
of the source I quoted
"B.4 Notes on helping search engines index your Web site"
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.4
refers to "helping search engines".

No question mark after "B.4 Notes on helping search engines index your Web
site"

David Dorward · Dec 19, 2004

Luigi said:
Some of you seem to suggest that one should design only for the user.
I prefer to design both for the user and for search engines.

I suggest designing for the web - which means designing for users and search
engines (and everything else) but avoiding writing code which will trigger
known bugs.

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Link rel="start"

Luigi Donatello Asero

Barbara de Zoete

Luigi Donatello Asero

Luigi Donatello Asero

Steve Pugh

Barbara de Zoete

Luigi Donatello Asero

Barbara de Zoete

Luigi Donatello Asero

Luigi Donatello Asero

Jukka K. Korpela

Luigi Donatello Asero

Jukka K. Korpela

David Dorward

David Dorward

Luigi Donatello Asero

Luigi Donatello Asero

Luigi Donatello Asero

Luigi Donatello Asero

David Dorward

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