Live data from Hacker News

Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

w3.org

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#11

The headers that push a bit into the margin are an interesting stylistic choice, but why on earth does it have to be random? Did something change that affected the layout somehow? (ironically)

It's different for the different header levels.

https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/GuideStyle.css

    H1 { margin-left: -20%; }
    H2 { margin-left: -15%; }
    H3 { margin-left: -10%; }
    H4 { margin-left: -05%; }

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#12

The headers that push a bit into the margin are an interesting stylistic choice, but why on earth does it have to be random? Did something change that affected the layout somehow? (ironically)

I find it works well for helping maintain context. I often can't easily tell the difference between different headers unless they're right next to each other, and even then some of them are difficult to discern. Adding the indentation is a way to make the hierarchy more clear.

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#13
Not that long ago I clicked on a link that Microsoft provided somewhere in Windows -- could have been the event log, I don't remember. I do remember it was for a specific support article, but it ended up at a generic landing page for something. I am not talking about a link from Windows 95, it must have been Windows 10. But regardless, it is all gone. Then again, it probably wasn't a cool URL to begin with.

It's amazingly many news sites that also seem to scrub their URLs every time they do a redesign. Also uncool.

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#14
post #7

What this page doesn't mention is 301 or 302 redirects. SEO has made "old URLs staying live" more of a widespread concern than it was at the time. And WordPress etc ship with inbuilt redirects upon slug rename So to a large extent this has been mitigated and not using the suggestion here, which is to create a permanent URL ontology upfront That said eventually neglect, removal, reorgs (or simply websites going offlin…

Sounds like most URIs have been downright uncool, then!

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#15
post #4
post #2

Great article, lots and lots of past discussion: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cool+uris

This post is related to (inspired by?): "The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)" (longbets.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228458 186 points | 12 hours ago | 91 comments

OP is from 1998 so it's the other way around

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#16
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is related to (inspired by?): "The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)" (longbets.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228458 186 points | 12 hours ago | 91 comments

OP is from 1998 so it's the other way around

I meant the post/submission itself, not the content.

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#17
post #13

Not that long ago I clicked on a link that Microsoft provided somewhere in Windows -- could have been the event log, I don't remember. I do remember it was for a specific support article, but it ended up at a generic landing page for something. I am not talking about a link from Windows 95, it must have been Windows 10. But regardless, it is all gone. Then again, it probably wasn't a cool URL to begin with. It's amaz…

Entropy

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#18
If you run a statically generated website, I recommend append-only generation, where you keep your `dist/` (or whatever web root) stateful between builds. This guarantees you don't break URIs even if the static generator changes or the source content is removed.

You can even make an orphan branch and check out that branch into `dist/` as a worktree to keep it under version control.

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#19
post #13

Not that long ago I clicked on a link that Microsoft provided somewhere in Windows -- could have been the event log, I don't remember. I do remember it was for a specific support article, but it ended up at a generic landing page for something. I am not talking about a link from Windows 95, it must have been Windows 10. But regardless, it is all gone. Then again, it probably wasn't a cool URL to begin with. It's amaz…

Microsoft has a terrible habit of doing that. KB's used to have a predicable URL, they may again, but they keep changing them. Or any of their docs really. It's terrible as those URL's end up in other documents to be killed. This is not really an enterprise friendly way of supporting customers.

Re: Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)

#20
post #13

Not that long ago I clicked on a link that Microsoft provided somewhere in Windows -- could have been the event log, I don't remember. I do remember it was for a specific support article, but it ended up at a generic landing page for something. I am not talking about a link from Windows 95, it must have been Windows 10. But regardless, it is all gone. Then again, it probably wasn't a cool URL to begin with. It's amaz…

Average time of url is 5 years.

Therefore I try to make a local copy of a document that I link to.

There a plugin for Firefox that can check bookmarked links. You will be surprised how they vanish pretty fast…

Post reply on HN