About some <link rel=".>

Are they useful or not?

[Gusgsm]

I have found some <link rel="...> items in a web page. I use some, I had doubts about adding two of them to a site, but the others... sound to me like snake oil. Am I wrong?:

I use these two:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="../estilos/gris.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> The style sheet for screen display.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../estilos/dina4.css" type="text/css" media="print" /> The style sheet for print.

I may use this one:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico" /> Ok. That's the icon at the bar. I know.

But, what about these? (I am not using them):

<link rel="index" href="http://www.somesite.com/" />
<link rel="author" href="contact.php" />
<link rel="help" href="help.php" />
<link rel="contents" href="webmap.php" />
<link rel="first" href="index.php" />
<link rel="last" href="apage.php" />
<link rel="prev" href="anotherpage.php" />
<link rel="next" href="someotherpage.php" />

Thanks a lot :)

[BlobFisk]

Hi Gusgm,

Yep - they can be very useful, especially for Opera users like myself. The Previous and (especially) Next appear on one of my Opera menus.

According to the W3C [w3.org]:

Although LINK has no content, it conveys relationship information that may be rendered by user agents in a variety of ways (e.g., a tool-bar with a drop-down menu of links).

I believe that some assistive browsers use them a lot also.

HTH

[technossomy]

Hi Gusgsm

They are little used these days by any browser other than Opera and fall in the category of metadata: data about the webpage, rather than its content. Modern content management systems would fill these out automatically, or can be configured to do so.

Hope this helps

Tech

[Gusgsm]

It does help. Thank you both.