I propose to increase the accessibility (as well as SEO) of the sites using Drupal by supporting the HTML link Element which defines the document relationship. As this element is placed within the HTML head, it isn't directly seen by the user, however the browsers as well as assistive technologies may use this information in order to provide better navigation e.g. by offering a dedicated navigation bar.
Most current browsers support this element.
- Internet Explorer 8: Plugin Navigation Bar
- Mozilla Firefox 7: Plugin Link Widgets
- Konqueror 4.6.5: Plugin "Document Relations" (Package "konq-plugins")
- Opera 11: Native support
- Lynx 2.8.8: Native support
You're pleased to complete this list.
On the other side, the Drupal support is very poor. Currently (besides of node module generation link types "canonical" and "shortlink") only the book module generates link types "prev", "next" as well as "up".
The question is, which link types are meaningful in which context and which modules should generate them under which circumstances.
Comments
More details please
Hey tomuch,
Thanks for the info. Looks like it could be a good add-on module, but not sure it's going to get into core unless it gets broader support within the W3C. I'm interested though in more information about this and how it would improve usability & accessibility.
I'd suggest starting up a sandbox to post some of your ideas & get folks thinking about them in terms of how they use & implement sites. Also, lists of sites which are currently using this element.
We're talking about using this in the heading, right? - http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_link.asp
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OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
A very valuable element
I've always been a big fan of this under-appreciated element.
It has broad support from the W3C by virtue of being part of the standard: don't know when it first appeared, but HTML4.01 is old enough.
As far as SEO goes, ahem, well, let's just say it improves semantic interpretation and that's a Good Thing, always.
With limited time, here's how I've used it in the past to improve accessibility and discoverability:
<link title="The manual in Arabic" type="text/html" rel="alternate" charset="ISO-8859-6" hreflang="ar" href="arabic.html" />
[adapted from W3C's example]. I think there are language switcher add-ons for Firefox that make use of this in the same way the stylesheet switcher does.The alternative is lots of links with flag icons, "Printable version", "RSS Feed" and Previous/Next/Top etc cluttering up the rendered page and search engine indexes and tab sequences for that matter. If browsers supported these link types better, such non-content page text wouldn't need to exist. I used to run Opera Mini on a pretty small phone screen. It supported many of these links in its menu and it was invaluable in that awkward environment.
The Canonical and Shortlink relationships are just Google doing nothing to discourage bad URL management habits, IMO. I don't have to like every relationship. It's just a shame these ones happen to get widespread support. :)
Neat.
Thanks @hughbris
On the i18n elements, this seems like a natural extension for Drupal. Might not get into D7, but it's definitely worth bringing it up here http://groups.drupal.org/node/173569
Do the bot's use the link element? Will it improve SEO? It's worth posting to this module - http://drupal.org/project/print
Interesting to think of using it to convey relationships in the book module. There's good reason to add an issue to core looking at that.
Could potentially add something like this to Views.
Nice to hear that it is proving useful for the mobile space too. Here again, there's a community who might be interested.
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OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Additional resources
Several resources:
Some unofficial (partially rather old) articles: