Author Archives: David Megginson

REST design question #2: listing and discovering resources

Posted on February 16, 2005 by David Megginson

The second in my series of REST design questions is how to handle listing and paging, or, in fancier jargon, resource discovery. I prefer concrete examples, so I’ll start with one that I know is flawed and then try to … Continue reading →

Tagged | 4 Comments

The best Firefox extension

Posted on February 15, 2005 by David Megginson

The Firefox browser has a lot of well-loved extensions like AdBlock and ImageZoom (especially useful for looking at weather maps online), but my personal favourite is a little-known one called Show Anchors Anyone writing for the web — and especially … Continue reading →

Tagged | 3 Comments

xml:lang is an accessibility issue

Posted on February 15, 2005 by David Megginson

Charl van Niekerk has an interesting posting on a topic that should have been be more obvious to me: that the xml:lang attribute (and HTML lang) are critical for making online information accessible to the visually-impaired. Voice synthesizers that read … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

REST design question #1: identification

Posted on February 14, 2005 by David Megginson

My first REST design question is about the fact that RESTafarians seem to consider identification and location to be the same thing, and following from that, the question of how to make identification persistent in XML resources. For example, assume … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 15 Comments

REST design questions

Posted on February 14, 2005 by David Megginson

[Update: fifth and final question added] I’ve been thinking a bit about REST recently while working on a new data-oriented application. REST in its now-broadened meaning is easy to explain: pieces of data (likely XML-encoded) sit out there on the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 10 Comments

Open Web, Closed Databases?

Posted on February 14, 2005 by David Megginson

Web site developers seem to be getting open specifications: more and more, I’m seeing sites developed for specifications like (X)HTML, CSS2, DOM, etc., not sites developed for applications like MSIE or Firefox or Opera; I’m seeing Java-based web apps that … Continue reading →

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Rumours of xml:id trouble in the W3C

Posted on February 11, 2005 by David Megginson

[Updated: see below] Norman Walsh has just posted an unusual essay. The gist of it seems to be that the W3C (at some level) has decided to modify the xml:id specification (released only days ago as a Candidate Recommendation, as … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Hub URLs and feudalism in the blogsphere

Posted on February 11, 2005 by David Megginson

Web pages, and especially weblogs, include apparently unnecessary links all the time. For example, is there really any need to link to Microsoft every time I mention the company’s name? Is anyone reading this posting going to follow the link … Continue reading →

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L10N out of control

Posted on February 9, 2005 by David Megginson

[update: a mitigating factor] Localization (L10N) is a good thing in general: people like to see the languages, punctuation, and systems of measure that they’re used to. So, hats off to Google’s new beta map service for putting most of … Continue reading →

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xml:id

Posted on February 8, 2005 by David Megginson

Anne van Kesteren’s is the first report to reach me that the W3C’s xml:id spec has just moved up the food chain to Candidate Recommendation. I’m usually one of the first people to whine about too many XML-related specs, but … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 7 Comments