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Ian,
Isn't that a specific case of a URL referring to a human-readable web
page in a site addressed to people? When the resource does not provide
for navigation (media files or database files do not usually point at
each other, web pages usually do point at each other) truncating the URL
is an attempt to get to a web page (in essentially a parallel
information structure) that then points to the thing that you want. The
fall-back to web pages is not part of the general resource model and
nothing stops anyone from creating a site that contains no html if they
only want to to provide resources other than web pages.
People do all kinds of bizarre things with web browsers and a
human-readable web site architecture should accommodate that, but web
site architecture and resource identification are different things.
Greg
Ian Graham wrote:
>
>
> Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>
>> * Ian Graham wrote:
>>
>>> One observation/result was that a substantial fraction of users
>>> expect truncating a URL at 'natural' places to return meaningful
>>> results. This, for example, is one of the intuitive 'search'
>>> algorithms people use when a link doesn't work. As an example, if
>>>
>>> http://somewhere.org/US/IL/
>>>
>>> is a valid URL, then truncating this to
>>>
>>> http://somewhere.org/US/
>>>
>>> should both work and provide meaningful information.
>>
>>
>>
>> People who do this commit web architecture crime, the TAG commands
>> "People making use of URIs SHOULD NOT attempt to infer properties
>> of the referenced resource".
>
>
> Well, since likely < 0.002% of Web users have read the spec, and since
> that recommendation is counter to any intuitive understanding of a
> URL, that particular recommendation is .... err... useless.
>
> People do what make sense to them. And since URLs have structure, some
> people (and likely some software) naturally look for meaning in it.
>
> I mean how often have you gone to a URL, got a 404, and then chopped
> bits off until you found something relevant/useful? And how often
> were you pissed when that didn't work?
>
> Designing for what people actually do is, imo, a characteristic of
> good design, even if this contradicts a spec.
>
> Ian
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