This relates to feedback from the Mellon-funded Embedding Preservability project - it was suggested we log our ideas here for further conversation/consideration. Currently, when you click to open an annotation the URL does not change - this means there would be no way to share a link to an annotation. Also, because annotations appear as a result of an onclick() event on a <span> tag, this makes it more challenging for web crawlers to discover annotation content, which also impacts the ease with which this content is crawled/archived.
Following the pattern used to open a resource modal, replacing the <span> used for annotations with something like the following would allow the annotation view of a page to be bookmarked and simplify crawling:
<a href="https://manifold.umn.edu/read/metagaming/section/00d65eb7-926c-4159-9d95-5fee5285e7b8/annotation/abcdef-1234-5678-ghij-abc123def456"... >{highlighted text}
Why is this feature important? Who does it help?
Allows users to bookmark and share annotations. Enables crawlers to discover annotations for indexing and archiving.
User Stories
As a preservation archive I would like to be able to auto-crawl and archive Manifold publications, including annotation content when in scope for preservation, without having to create a customized crawl process to support content that is only visible via an onclick() event.
As a user of Manifold I would like to be able to bookmark and share annotation links.
Design Notes
Discovery of href URLs in a-links is broadly supported by web crawlers but firing onclick() events to discover content is less frequently supported or requires custom solutions. Using <a href supports fully automated crawling, improving the likelihood that archives can get a high-fidelity copy of Manifold publications for preservation.
zdavis
commented
1 year ago
Feature Description
This relates to feedback from the Mellon-funded Embedding Preservability project - it was suggested we log our ideas here for further conversation/consideration. Currently, when you click to open an annotation the URL does not change - this means there would be no way to share a link to an annotation. Also, because annotations appear as a result of an onclick() event on a
<span>tag, this makes it more challenging for web crawlers to discover annotation content, which also impacts the ease with which this content is crawled/archived.Following the pattern used to open a resource modal, replacing the
<span>used for annotations with something like the following would allow the annotation view of a page to be bookmarked and simplify crawling:<a href="https://manifold.umn.edu/read/metagaming/section/00d65eb7-926c-4159-9d95-5fee5285e7b8/annotation/abcdef-1234-5678-ghij-abc123def456"... >{highlighted text}Why is this feature important? Who does it help?
Allows users to bookmark and share annotations. Enables crawlers to discover annotations for indexing and archiving.
User Stories
As a preservation archive I would like to be able to auto-crawl and archive Manifold publications, including annotation content when in scope for preservation, without having to create a customized crawl process to support content that is only visible via an onclick() event. As a user of Manifold I would like to be able to bookmark and share annotation links.
Design Notes
Discovery of href URLs in a-links is broadly supported by web crawlers but firing onclick() events to discover content is less frequently supported or requires custom solutions. Using
<a hrefsupports fully automated crawling, improving the likelihood that archives can get a high-fidelity copy of Manifold publications for preservation.Development Notes
N/A