[Seaside] Meaningful URLs was (Re: HV intro...) on the Squeak list

[Avi Bryant]

On 16 Apr 2002, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

> I have emailed URLs which spanned 3-4 lines in my email client. Yuck.
<snip>
> I understand that there are times when certain data needs to be embedded
> in URLs, but I don't think the URL must be extraordinarily long or ugly
> to accomplish such.

Agreed. Seaside URLs are always relatively short:
http://foo.com/seaside/myapp/99/top/53/view is typical.  They never get
any longer than that.

> I personally like sensible URLs.
> If possible I would like for whatever I choose to develop my website/app
> in to have as reasonable URLs as possible.
>
> This may be something we agree to disagree on.
> That's okay too.

I personally prefer not to have to think about mapping an external naming
scheme onto every point of my application.  I prefer to let the system
generate URLs for me, particularly since that opens the possibility of a
URL being able to refer of one of 10 million possible states rather than
one the 100 or so I can come up with names for.  So, yes, I think we
must simply disagree on that point.

Mind you, for applications that truly do have a relatively small number of
possible states (Google is an example of one such application, the Wiki is
another), I would certainly prefer meaningful URLs.  I just don't deal
with applications like that very often.

Avi