Re: OT -- Microsoft's Smart Tags
On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 10:07:59AM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
> Suppose you create a web page, and you make a word or phrase
> highlighted because it's a tag for one of your own URLs (i.e.
> _you_ want the reader to be able to follow a link at that point).
>
> And suppose the word or phrase is one of the things that MS Smart
> Tags wants to hijack.
>
> The question is: Who trumps whom?
Background information: Smart Tags don't create a link in the normal
sense. Rather, they create a pop-up list of links so that, e.g., you
could right-click on the word "Microsoft" and get the options to go
to microsoft.com, stock listings for MSFT, their last dozen press
releases, etc.
There's a plugin (I don't recall which or from who) which advertises
something else as its main capability, but also happens to do
implement a function which is, essentially, third-party Smart Tags.
The way it handles this situation is to simply add the original link
to the list of options, thus making it unclear to the user which link
(if any) was placed by the page's author.
Hopefully, given the way that MS has implemented the Smart Tag UI,
left-clicking would take you to the author's link and right-clicking
would bring up MS's set of links. But don't think I'm optimistic
about that... (Well, actually, I hope that Smart Tags go the way of
Bob, but I don't think that's real likely.)
--
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safe for non US software engineers to visit the United States. - Alan Cox
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