[Seaside] Truly Opaque URLs

[James Robertson]

This is the sort of thing developers tend to get overly concerned with, 
while end users of web apps don't care.  At all.

When an average user goes to their bank's website, believe me, the question:

"I wonder what those characters in the url mean?"

doesn't even occur to him.  So long as the entry point to the app is 
bookmarkable, and so long as normal things like "remember my username" work, 
the rest is utterly irrelevant


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jimmie Houchin" <j.squeak at cyberhaus.us>
To: "Seaside - general discussion" <seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Seaside] Truly Opaque URLs


> Sebastian Sastre wrote:
>> Sounds interesting because allways there is some comment about our 
>> 'strange'
>> urls.
>>
>> But I'm seeing:
>>  Error: "/seaside/about/examples/multicounter/OpaqueIDHere" not found.
>
> Hello,
>
> To me as long as there are &_k=, &_s=, &_n=  type elements in the URL,
> people will always make an attempt to understand the URL and determine
> what they can and cannot do with such URLs.
>
> But with my idea, there is nothing understandable except that it is an
> ID to the stuff after the app entry point.
>
> Real URL
> http://www.seaside.st/about/examples/multicounter?25&_k=sAuAnwVD&_n&_s=pWPgxuITuEvuGsyu
>
> Example URLs, do not work
> http://www.seaside.st/about/examples/multicounter/OpaqueIDHere
> http://www.seaside.st/about/examples/multicounter/URL_BASE64_UUUID_Here
> http://www.seaside.st/about/examples/multicounter/sAuAnwVDpWPgxuITuEvuGsyu
>
> My apologies about the above. They are merely examples to be able to
> contrast to the actual URL I had on the demo site.
>
> Could such a URL management also enable possibly a shorter URL? How long
> (how many characters) does something like a BASE64 ID have to be to be
> unique enough to identify the code running at that point in that image?
>
> To me the more opaque and the shorter the opaque portion of the URL the
> better. I think this can help reduce arguments against the ugly URLs in
> Seaside. It won't eliminate the arguments, but if we can have RESTful
> style URLs up to the opaque ID, then we can have much of the best of both.
>
> Thoughts.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jimmie
>
> _______________________________________________
> seaside mailing list
> seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
>