Standards: How important is this set by Microsoft?

[kgun]

Nearly every webmaster know what a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is. Not so many know that there is a generalized term, URI (Uniform Resource Indicator) that is generalized by Microsoft as an IRI (Internationalized Resource Identifier).

That means that a URL is a URI that is an IRI, but the opposite is not true. These standards are very important when syndicating information to the Web.

It is good that a large company like Microsoft (or at least a Microsoft emplyoyee) set an extremely important general standard.

Will the company use that standard themself is the question?

P.S. If you do not know what an URI is, read and reread this important document.

Improwing Web Linking using XLink.

Note there is a related book:
Erik Wilde, David Lowe

XPath, XLink, XPointer, and XML: A Practical Guide to Web Hyperlinking and Transclusion

Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional
Pub Date: July 23, 2002
Print ISBN-10: 0-201-70344-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-201-70344-3


Related link: Improving Web Linking Using XLink [ David Lowe, Erik Wilde ]

[wige]

Just some examples. Most users are probably more familiar with URIs than they realize.

All URIs follow a basic format> protocol:location?query#fragment
http://domain.tld/folder/filename.txt?search=term#pageindex
mailto:account@mailserver.tld
javascript:functionname(parameters)
about:blank

The double slash denotes a resource on another server, a single slash denotes a resource on the same server, and no slash indicates a resource on the same page (or in the case of mailto activates a function of the local computer).

These let you add some very interesting capabilities to your web site. For example, if you want visitors to your site to be able to contact you with Yahoo Messenger, you would add <a href="ymsgr:sendIM?yourscreenname">Click here</a> to your page.

[kgun]

Did you read the document in the link "Improving ... " and note the wide definition of a URI and the advanced linking schemes provided by XLink?

[wige]

Yes. I came across the same or a similar writeup when I was researching XSLT. It looks like it lays the foundation for a very robust system and it would be interesting to see what uses are found for this methodology. A few months ago I had been testing something similar, but changes to Firefox and IE made the project obsolete. I have a feeling that this technology may actually be used in MS Office, particularly One Note, which has a pretty robust system for cross linking files and other resources, in fact most of the capabilities listed in the provided document.

[kgun]

I have ordered the book that the paper is based on, but it takes time to get it from Amazon.