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What does "HREF" stand for? (2008)

tomayko.com

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

#41

Post by nailer »

billforsternz wrote: post #33

In the software world we often seem to end up with abbreviations which are ubiquitous but no longer strongly linked to their unabbreviated form. I often find this annoying and distracting. I try an avoid being the source of such annoyance for others. For example if I find myself using abbreviations in my source code, maybe as a prefix for example, I will always ensure the abbreviation is explained at least once in a…

I once asked a very experienced colleague in a Linux team to fix the modes on a file, and he wasn't sure what I meant.

Explaining the acronyms helps. It gives a feeling that things were actually designed, and allowed you to see the consistencies since those acronyms keep appearing in multiple places.

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

#43

Post by nationcrafting »

aj700 wrote: post #36
jmduke wrote: post #2

I'm surprised to see that this submission is from 2008; while I identify with the author's struggle (and subsequent delight) as he plays the part of an Internet archaeologist, I thought this was a common piece of knowledge five years ago, let alone today. Goes to show how incorrect assumptions about what we do (and do not) know can be. Burners-Lee's talks are wonderful. My favorite is his talk "Hypertext and Our Coll…

Yeah, I just assume that today's 23-year-olds (or 13-year-olds) should all know this, and had the same experience as me, using notepad.exe to alter/test some html, which was grabbed from a "CD-ROM", that came with a "magazine", with something like "Netscape 1.0" (for Win 3.1) on it, in late 1994! What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

Haha, I still edit some of my HTML in TextEdit or some simple txt editor... It just opens so much quicker than Dreamweaver...

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

#44

Post by epo »

ghenne wrote: post #42

The term Hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson, probably 1965. Check out his book Computer Lib/Dream Machines. He envisioneers the internet quite well.

Coined '63, published '65 according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson

I'm old enough to have read Computer Lib ('74) when it came out, I have a first edition which I imported into the UK by sending some sort of international money order to a US bookshop. For some reason I also have a second edition.

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

#45

Post by andrewingram »

aj700 wrote: post #36
jmduke wrote: post #2

I'm surprised to see that this submission is from 2008; while I identify with the author's struggle (and subsequent delight) as he plays the part of an Internet archaeologist, I thought this was a common piece of knowledge five years ago, let alone today. Goes to show how incorrect assumptions about what we do (and do not) know can be. Burners-Lee's talks are wonderful. My favorite is his talk "Hypertext and Our Coll…

Yeah, I just assume that today's 23-year-olds (or 13-year-olds) should all know this, and had the same experience as me, using notepad.exe to alter/test some html, which was grabbed from a "CD-ROM", that came with a "magazine", with something like "Netscape 1.0" (for Win 3.1) on it, in late 1994! What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

That was exactly my experience, I taught myself HTML this way before I had even used the internet.

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

#46

Post by walid »

jameshart wrote: post #25

Let'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.

The answer might sound logical to you but all this time I thought the expansion was Hyperlink REFerence. My HTML education started in 1998 or 1999 from reading a PC Magazine series of articles on how to program in HTML. I don't remember how I got the wrong info and frankly didn't bother to care about this difference but I clicked this article with a smug face and reached the bottom feeling childishly embarrassed.

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

#48

Post by D9u »

nationcrafting wrote: post #43
aj700 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I just assume that today's 23-year-olds (or 13-year-olds) should all know this, and had the same experience as me, using notepad.exe to alter/test some html, which was grabbed from a "CD-ROM", that came with a "magazine", with something like "Netscape 1.0" (for Win 3.1) on it, in late 1994! What's The Frequency, Kenneth?

Haha, I still edit some of my HTML in TextEdit or some simple txt editor... It just opens so much quicker than Dreamweaver...

I taught myself beginning HTML/XHTML/PHP using Vieka Wordpad on a Samsung SGH-i607. 3G was my only connection to the net at the time.

I never did use an IDE until lately, but Geany isn't much of an IDE compared to some other choices.

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

#49

Post by haptiK »

jmduke wrote: post #2

I'm surprised to see that this submission is from 2008; while I identify with the author's struggle (and subsequent delight) as he plays the part of an Internet archaeologist, I thought this was a common piece of knowledge five years ago, let alone today. Goes to show how incorrect assumptions about what we do (and do not) know can be. Burners-Lee's talks are wonderful. My favorite is his talk "Hypertext and Our Coll…

Not only can I not believe this is not common knowledge, I can also not believe it's even a link on HN at all. Ridiculous.

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

#50

Post by billforsternz »

nfg wrote: post #38
billforsternz wrote: post #33

In the software world we often seem to end up with abbreviations which are ubiquitous but no longer strongly linked to their unabbreviated form. I often find this annoying and distracting. I try an avoid being the source of such annoyance for others. For example if I find myself using abbreviations in my source code, maybe as a prefix for example, I will always ensure the abbreviation is explained at least once in a…

“One interesting quirk of MFC is the use of "Afx" as the prefix for many functions, macros and the standard precompiled header name "stdafx.h". During early development what became MFC was called "Application Framework Extensions" and abbreviated "Afx". The name Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) was adopted too late in the release cycle to change these references” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Foundation_Cl…

Thanks. Actually this explanation reminds me that part of the frustration came from the feeling that Mfc would have been a much more logical prefix and wondering why oh why they hadn't used that instead.
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