href stands for HiddenReflex
What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#22I just wonder how many people think that web is so wonderful invention. But they completely forget Gopher. There isn't so much difference between web and gopher after all. It's just a bit different linking method. After all, it's rare that invetions are relly great, most of those are just small gradual change over time. Still remember how much hype there was about hypertext back in old days. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#23So, 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…
28 million results with google means less then 1000 results
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#24Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#25Let's see - the HREF attribute that implements the basic principle of hypertext referencing in the Hypertext Markup Language which TBL invented as a file format to serve over his Hypertext Transfer Protocol... what could it possibly mean? I can see the confusion.
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#26Let's see - the HREF attribute that implements the basic principle of hypertext referencing in the Hypertext Markup Language which TBL invented as a file format to serve over his Hypertext Transfer Protocol... what could it possibly mean? I can see the confusion.
This comment screams "downvote me".
EDIT: The one above, I meant. Thanks though, the downvote here too was well deserved. :D
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#27According to Wikipedia the "href" attribute stands for:
"Hypertext REFerence"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink)
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#28I'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.
> I mean, the dual-use of a as both anchor and link has always been bizarre.
In the original Ted Nelson "Xanadu" conception of hypertext (which inspired Berners-Lee and others at the time), all links were bi-directional.
We now use as a target and as a source but the original idea was that every link would be both a target and source – you'd link from one page to another then travel through the bi-directional link backwards and resume the original page. Yeah, it didn't happen because it was grossly impractical didn't serve any real-world purpose. But that's why they share the same tag.
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The query is meant to be entered into Google web search.
Wait. What. Really? Oh my goodness. Okay, so that sort of works. It's a bit of a kludge though.
It’s not a kludge. It’s a way to search websites that happen to have awful search (like Google Groups).
In most cases that works very well and it’s universally applicable. It’s a consistent search interface for (pretty much) any website there is. You can just throw Google at it and it works as good if not better than the websites’ own search (depending on how good that is), but it’s also a consistent interface you do not have to discover and re-learn for every website individually. Sometimes int
Kludge to me implies that it’s complicated to set up (it’s not; just “site:” in front of the website plus your search terms) or that is either not universally useable or at least requires a lot of manual adjustment every time you want to use it elsewhere (it’s not; universal and consistent search that works the same every time).
Sometimes a website’s own tools can be somewhat more comprehensive, sometimes they are so bad that switching over to Google is a necessity to find anything at all.
Re: What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)
#30I 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…
It's funny. I half jokingly apply that maxim to a lot business decisions I see.
Someone will say "oh it makes sense that apartment a does this, because x y z" and I respond with "they may be doing something right, but theyre almost certainly not doing it hat way because it's right"
But yeah. It pays not assume the obvious answer is the right one