Looking for Help with FAQ
 

It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
for the notes:
http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html

It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed path
would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.

URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths. This
makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed to:
href="/faq/#testCookie"

After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new index page.

It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching in on
this, please contact me.

Garrett

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

On May 21, 8:00 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable.

So what? URLs are not things that are required to be memorable.

> The current url for the notes:
> http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>
> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes.

That would be a very subjective judgment of what would be better. I
would regard the change as pointless effort with no real benefit and
much potential disadvantage, so not "better".

> The proposed path
> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.

So you intend doubling up (at least one page of) the notes? Because
currently the archives, many third party web pages and numerous books,
reference notes pages using the current URLs, so making the pages
unavailable from their current URLs will not be doing anyone any
favours.

> URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths.

They did use relative paths.

> This makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed
> to: href="/faq/#testCookie"

Not necessarily. The FAQ should never have been changed in a way that
made the fragment identifier #FAQ4_4 ineffective as the archives are
full of references to the FAQ that use that style of fragment
identifier that should never have been broken by modifications to the
FAQ (otherwise the archives are diminished as a resource). After all,
even if there is no longer a section 4.4 there is no reason why the
answer it once contained could not be tagged with the fragment
identifier "FAQ4_4".

If modifications to the FAQ didn't invalidate the references to the
FAQ in the archives they would not invalidate the URLs in the notes.

> After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new
> index page.
>
> It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching
> in on this, please contact me.

The notes pages use very simple and uniform mark-up. Mechanically
transforming the URLs would be trivial.

Richard.

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

[posted & mailed]

Garrett Smith wrote:
> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
> for the notes:
> http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>
> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed path
> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>
> URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths. This
> makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed to:
> href="/faq/#testCookie"

Full ACK.

> After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new index page.

The beauty of it is that the files don't really need to be fixed, given
proper Web server configuration.

> It is a lot of tedious work.

I don't think so.

> If anyone is interested in pitching in on this, please contact me.

I think I know my way around Regular Expressions, Apache/2.x, and
mod_rewrite (I use them both professionally and privately on a daily basis),
so I volunteer.


Regards,

PointedEars

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

Richard Cornford wrote:
> On May 21, 8:00 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
>> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable.
>
> So what? URLs are not things that are required to be memorable.

IBTD!

<http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>
<http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/uri-choose>

Short but talking URLs are a requirement for good search engine ranking and
even for accessibility nowadays.

>> The current url for the notes:
>> http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>>
>> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes.
>
> That would be a very subjective judgment of what would be better. I
> would regard the change as pointless effort with no real benefit and
> much potential disadvantage, so not "better".

You don't think that referring to

http://jibbering.com/faq/notes/closures#IE-memory-leak
(or http://cljs.example/faq/notes/closures#IE-memory-leak)

is easier to do and easier legible than referring to

http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_not...res.html#clMem

? Think again.

>> The proposed path
>> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>
> So you intend doubling up (at least one page of) the notes?

Hopefully not, as there is no need for that in order to achieve the above.

>> This makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
>> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed
>> to: href="/faq/#testCookie"
>
> Not necessarily. The FAQ should never have been changed in a way that
> made the fragment identifier #FAQ4_4 ineffective as the archives are
> full of references to the FAQ that use that style of fragment
> identifier that should never have been broken by modifications to the
> FAQ (otherwise the archives are diminished as a resource). After all,
> even if there is no longer a section 4.4 there is no reason why the
> answer it once contained could not be tagged with the fragment
> identifier "FAQ4_4".

Yes, AFAIK fragment identifiers are not sent to the server and so cannot be
URL-rewritten. However, one can do

<h3><a name="testCookie">Setting</a> <a name="FAQ4_4">Cookies</a></h3>

because

<a name="foo"></a>

or

<a name="foo"> </a>

might not be regarded an anchor, and `a' elements must not nest. Keeping
track of the changes is what this makes difficult, though.

BTW, I do not think that the current

<h3 id="formatDate">
<a class="empty" name="FAQ4_1"> </a>
4.1 How do I format a date with javascript?
</h3>

is a good idea. Should be at least

<h3 id="formatDate">
<a name="FAQ4_1">4.1 How do I format a date with javascript?</a>
</h3>

Also note that not all user agents support IDs as anchors.


PointedEars

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

In comp.lang.javascript message <gv2u6d$8t0$1@news.eternal-
september.org>, Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:25, Garrett Smith
<dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com> posted:
>It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
>for the notes:
>http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>
>It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed
>path would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.


Not important. You have better things to do. There is no need to type
the Notes URL at all; users should bookmark it and the FAQ.

Anyway, it is only necessary to put javascript faq notes in a
browser address bar. I get 16e6 hits, with the right one first. One
early hit is a CLJ wiki, at <http://www.cljwiki.org/>.

Especially not important when you add the Notes Index to the FAQ, as
discussed before.


However, add to the TOC/Intro page anything that might aid searches.
For example, one of my pages includes "The word Millennium is not spelt
Millenium, Milenium, or Milennium (but that reference may help bad
spellers using search engines!)."

Search terms should include clj, c.l.j, ecmascript, news, newsgroup,
Usenet.


Equally, the Notes should have a copyright statement in the Intro, and a
copyright indication on the other pages.

>It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching in on
>this, please contact me.

Don't let Lahn anywhere near it.

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

Richard Cornford wrote:
> On May 21, 8:00 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
>> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable.
>
> So what? URLs are not things that are required to be memorable.
>
>> The current url for the notes:
>> http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>>
>> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes.
>
> That would be a very subjective judgment of what would be better. I
> would regard the change as pointless effort with no real benefit and
> much potential disadvantage, so not "better".
>

The benefit is that it is shorter and more memorable.

>> The proposed path
>> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>
> So you intend doubling up (at least one page of) the notes? Because
> currently the archives, many third party web pages and numerous books,
> reference notes pages using the current URLs, so making the pages
> unavailable from their current URLs will not be doing anyone any
> favours.

Yes, double it up then create a redirect or a rewrite.

>
>> URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths.
>
> They did use relative paths.
>

The faq notes I don't have permissions on. I don't know if they were
ever changed or not, but they do link to FAQ page on jibbering.com,
using a full url (see just below).

>> This makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
>> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed
>> to: href="/faq/#testCookie"
>
> Not necessarily. The FAQ should never have been changed in a way that
> made the fragment identifier #FAQ4_4 ineffective as the archives are
> full of references to the FAQ that use that style of fragment
> identifier that should never have been broken by modifications to the
> FAQ (otherwise the archives are diminished as a resource). After all,
> even if there is no longer a section 4.4 there is no reason why the
> answer it once contained could not be tagged with the fragment
> identifier "FAQ4_4".
>

Changing the FAQ to give more semantic fragment identifiers made those
links more meaningful to humans and bots.

Changing to use relative paths to link to the FAQ makes the FAQ portable
to another server, which has been the subject of a few recent threads.
It would also make it easy to find the faq_notes index page from the
cookies page.

The current notes index:
http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/

That page, while useful, is not quite what one might expect to find from
the "notes" page, and does not link back to the FAQ.

Instead, I think it would be more intuitive to have the default page as
what is now faq_notes.html, and should be found at /faq/notes/ and that
all pages should have a breadcrumb for faq / notes (linking to both the
faq and to the notees).

Ineffectualizing fragment identifier in the links was a mistake that has
been rectified. http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4 links to the faq
section, which links back to the cookies page.

> If modifications to the FAQ didn't invalidate the references to the
> FAQ in the archives they would not invalidate the URLs in the notes.
>
>> After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new
>> index page.
>>
>> It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching
>> in on this, please contact me.
>
> The notes pages use very simple and uniform mark-up. Mechanically
> transforming the URLs would be trivial.

The pages need to be downloaded.

Find/replace in path: "notes"
Find: http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ([^'"]+)
Replace: ../\1

First steps could be to do that and test it.

Garrett

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

On May 21, 3:00*am, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
> for the notes:http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>
> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed path
> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>
> URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths. This
> makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed to:
> href="/faq/#testCookie"
>
> After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new index page.
>
> It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching in on
> this, please contact me.
>

As I've mentioned before, the markup and style need to be torn down
and rewritten from scratch. At the very least, major surgery is
needed.

I'd leave the URI's alone. It doesn't really matter in the larger
scheme of things. Who memorizes such URI's? Well, other than the
spiders and bookmarks, etc. Sure, you could use redirects to make the
move seamless, but it all sounds like a waste of time to me.

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

Dr J R Stockton wrote:
> In comp.lang.javascript message <gv2u6d$8t0$1@news.eternal-
> september.org>, Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:25, Garrett Smith
> <dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com> posted:
>> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
>> for the notes:
>> http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>>
>> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed
>> path would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>
>
> Not important. You have better things to do. There is no need to type
> the Notes URL at all; users should bookmark it and the FAQ.
>

The faq and notes should be portable to another server. This is more
easily facilitated by using relative paths.

The contributions page needs fixing. There is a mistake in the closures
article that needs fixing.

> Anyway, it is only necessary to put javascript faq notes in a
> browser address bar. I get 16e6 hits, with the right one first. One
> early hit is a CLJ wiki, at <http://www.cljwiki.org/>.
>
> Especially not important when you add the Notes Index to the FAQ, as
> discussed before.
>

The notes index page is linked from the faq.

"For additional explanation and detail relating to some aspects of the
FAQ, please see the FAQ Notes. "

I do not agree that this index page should be included on the FAQ. This
would make the TOC excessively long.

Instead, I believe the notes should instead be linked at the top, as it
is, and throughout, where relevant (as it is).

>
> Don't let Lahn anywhere near it.
>

I do not plan to provide access to Jim's server to anyone; that is up to
Jim to decide.

All personal feelings aside, I do not have a good reason not to accept
assistance from anyone. I have not gotten to respond to those comments
of the suggestion to use mod_rewrite, but I will.

All right enough, I am out of here now. Time to go appreciate the great
weather.

Garrett

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

David Mark wrote:
> On May 21, 3:00 am, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable. The current url
>> for the notes:http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>>
>> It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes. The proposed path
>> would be:- /faq/notes/ - defaulting to index.html.
>>
>> URLs need to be current to the FAQ and should use relative paths. This
>> makes the pages more portable. For example, a link:
>> href="http://jibbering.com/faq/#FAQ4_4", should be changed to:
>> href="/faq/#testCookie"
>>
>> After all files have been fixed, the FAQ can link to the new index page.
>>
>> It is a lot of tedious work. If anyone is interested in pitching in on
>> this, please contact me.
>>
>
> As I've mentioned before, the markup and style need to be torn down
> and rewritten from scratch. At the very least, major surgery is
> needed.
>

All right.

> I'd leave the URI's alone. It doesn't really matter in the larger
> scheme of things. Who memorizes such URI's? Well, other than the
> spiders and bookmarks, etc. Sure, you could use redirects to make the
> move seamless, but it all sounds like a waste of time to me.

I propose we start with a new URI path:
/faq/notes/

faq/notes/closures.html seems easy to remember for me. It is shorter. It
is more along the w3c guidelines that Thomas linked to.

The old URIs can be made to still work. A URL rewrite to the new URI(s)
(for old references to that URI) would work. That way, anyone typing in
the "old" (current) URI would get the URIs that have undergone whatever
surgery has been decided upon.

Garrett

Re: Looking for Help with FAQ
 

On May 21, 2:21*am, Richard Cornford <Richard.Cornf...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
> On May 21, 8:00 am, Garrett Smith wrote:
>
> > It has been noted that the "notes" url is unmemorable.
>
> So what? URLs are not things that are required to be memorable.
>
> > The current url for the notes:
> >http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/faq_notes.html
>
> > It was proposed to provide a better URL for the notes.
>
> That would be a very subjective judgment of what would be better. I
> would regard the change as pointless effort with no real benefit and
> much potential disadvantage, so not "better".

I agree with Richard.

The URL is not a problem, has been well logged in search engines,
written on paper and in bookmarks. Better to leave it alone.

Peter