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What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

tomayko.com

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Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#11
post #10

So, I go to Google Groups to try to find the first mention of HREF on Usenet. I have no idea how to do this. It takes four clicks just to get to the Google Groups page. I see a search box. I look for something to give me the advanced search page. I can't find it. (I can see 2 buttons for settings.) So, I type HREF into the search bar and click seach. The drop down offers "in any group" or "groups named". First attemp…

site:groups.google.com "href" daterange:2453006-2450815

Edit: sorry I bungled the conversion to the Julian format but you get the idea. You could also click around the 'search tools' sub-menu to do that.

Edit 2: It won't let you sort by date but you can just limit it to before 1994 :)

It only finds one message from 1993 (Dec 6), on comp.os.linux.development: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.linux.development/Pk...

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#12
post #11
post #10

So, I go to Google Groups to try to find the first mention of HREF on Usenet. I have no idea how to do this. It takes four clicks just to get to the Google Groups page. I see a search box. I look for something to give me the advanced search page. I can't find it. (I can see 2 buttons for settings.) So, I type HREF into the search bar and click seach. The drop down offers "in any group" or "groups named". First attemp…

site:groups.google.com "href" daterange:2453006-2450815 Edit: sorry I bungled the conversion to the Julian format but you get the idea. You could also click around the 'search tools' sub-menu to do that. Edit 2: It won't let you sort by date but you can just limit it to before 1994 :) It only finds one message from 1993 (Dec 6), on comp.os.linux.development: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.linux.development/P…

That's not sorted by date?

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#15
I'm surprised they didn't fix this sillyness in HTML5 when they were making up semantically-sensible tags for everything else.

A tag with

    
or something like that would make more sense as having the "article" inside the "body" of the document. Yes, I know link is already used in the head. You know what I mean, though.

I mean, the dual-use of a as both anchor and link has always been bizarre.

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#16
post #11
post #10

So, I go to Google Groups to try to find the first mention of HREF on Usenet. I have no idea how to do this. It takes four clicks just to get to the Google Groups page. I see a search box. I look for something to give me the advanced search page. I can't find it. (I can see 2 buttons for settings.) So, I type HREF into the search bar and click seach. The drop down offers "in any group" or "groups named". First attemp…

site:groups.google.com "href" daterange:2453006-2450815 Edit: sorry I bungled the conversion to the Julian format but you get the idea. You could also click around the 'search tools' sub-menu to do that. Edit 2: It won't let you sort by date but you can just limit it to before 1994 :) It only finds one message from 1993 (Dec 6), on comp.os.linux.development: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.linux.development/P…

http://imgur.com/a/FZYmz

Who knows.

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#17
post #15

I'm surprised they didn't fix this sillyness in HTML5 when they were making up semantically-sensible tags for everything else. A tag with or something like that would make more sense as having the "article" inside the "body" of the document. Yes, I know link is already used in the head. You know what I mean, though. I mean, the dual-use of a as both anchor and link has always been bizarre.

Most of the stuff HTML5 did is either backwards compatible in real-world HTML4 browsers or simply impossible; like, you've pretty much always been able to just drop down random tags that will default to acting sort of like a div. Changing how links work would be pretty severe.

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#18
post #10

So, I go to Google Groups to try to find the first mention of HREF on Usenet. I have no idea how to do this. It takes four clicks just to get to the Google Groups page. I see a search box. I look for something to give me the advanced search page. I can't find it. (I can see 2 buttons for settings.) So, I type HREF into the search bar and click seach. The drop down offers "in any group" or "groups named". First attemp…

Google it...

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#19
post #16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

site:groups.google.com "href" daterange:2453006-2450815 Edit: sorry I bungled the conversion to the Julian format but you get the idea. You could also click around the 'search tools' sub-menu to do that. Edit 2: It won't let you sort by date but you can just limit it to before 1994 :) It only finds one message from 1993 (Dec 6), on comp.os.linux.development: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.linux.development/P…

http://imgur.com/a/FZYmz Who knows.

The query is meant to be entered into Google web search.

Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

#20

I like this kind of article because what seems obvious isn't always correct. It could have just as easily meant... anything... and seeing the process and resources different people use to dig into things is always pretty neat.

In real life language etymology, people joke (with some degree of seriousness) that if there is an explanation for a particular term or phrase, that is logical, reasonable, and has some historical corroboration, it is almost certainly wrong.

The evolution of language is a strange and unexpected process. I think this clearly applies to programming languages too. Surely more so for some languages than for others... but this seems to definitely be the case for web languages, since the ecosystem they evolve in is so chaotic.

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