[Design] Human readable URL's in Vista / Chandler

[S. Mike Dierken]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael R. Bernstein" <webmaven@lvcm.com>

>
> In the example given ('/Contacts/Coworkers/Mitch Kapor'), Mitch's
> contact information could presumably appear in other views as well, such
> as '/Contacts/Friends/Mitch Kapor' or '/Contacts/US/CA/San
> Francisco/Mitch Kapor'). This gives us several paths to access the same
> object (seemingly a positive thing), but it also would mean that the
> path to an object could change depending on it's attributes, suddenly
> invalidating a reference to an object.
>
> I think that the URL to an object should only include those path
> elements that are necessary to identify the object, in this case that
> would be '/Contacts/Mitch Kapor'.

Very good points.
However, the '/Contacts/Coworkers/Mitch Kapor' might identify an entry in
the context of 'Coworkers' - like extra attributes sensible only within
'Coworkers' (like 'really good at foosball' or something).

This is essentially giving links their own identity. The purpose of this is
to have associated metadata in the context of that links container. The
person 'Mitch Kapor' is uniquely identifiable as well. The entry within
'Coworkers' may have a property of 'person' with the value that is the URI
of '/people/Mitch Kapor' or something.