[cap-talk] Webkeys vs. the web

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

Sam Mason wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 04:39:27PM +0000, Karp, Alan H wrote:
>> Sam Mason wrote:
>>> There are two general purpose designating actions that spring to mind;
>>>
>>> 1) the user clicking a "Copy this Link" button.
>>
>> Do you mean right-click Copy Link Address?  If so, that's one concern.  
> 
> No, sorry I edited the explanation out of my email before I sent it for
> some reason.  I meant that there should be a "Copy this Link" button as
> appears in, say, Google Maps.  The user should have to hit this, and
> it's this that performs the action of designation.

I don't see any significant difference in expected user intent between
clicking "Copy Link Address/Location" in a context menu, and clicking
a button that says "Copy this Link". If anything, the former is more
explicit, since a button may do almost anything; what the text of a button
says is merely advisory, and in general untrustworthy.

Besides, clicking a button in page content *obviously* shouldn't be able
to affect the clipboard.

[I just went to Google Maps to reassure myself that it was not exploiting
some boneheaded browser misfeature. Actually clicking "Link" just pops up
a text version of the link that the user can manually copy (the text is
preselected). That's not insecure, but to me seems less usable than
either "Copy Link Location" or copying from the address bar, if those
were made to do the right thing.]

More generally, I'm confused by the motivation for trying to duplicate
standard browser features (history, the back button, link copying, etc.)
in page content. *If* the standard feature doesn't do what is expected,
then that needs to be fixed; adding a similar feature to the page that
does something subtly different is a step in the wrong direction for
real usability.

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood ⚥