[thelist] Is changing window.status='evil?';

[Kristof Neirynck]

Simon Willison wrote:
> At 12:12 31/07/2002 -0500, Joel Konkle-Parker wrote:
>
>> On this note, what about affiliate links? You know, links that say
>> "Yahoo!" but
>> go to http://www.affiliateserver.com/3872397432987/
>>
>> Would using a window.status script to say "http://www.yahoo.com/" be
>> valid in
>> this situation, since that's where they will actually end up?
>
>
> That's a very interesting question. I am currently working on a soon-to-be
> open source PHP directory script, which allows site owners to arrange a
> collection of links in to hierarchical directories (DMOA / Yahoo style).
> The script includes the facility to count how many times a link has been
> clicked on, by directing all clicks through a redirect.php script that
> takes the link ID from the query string, increments the link's hit counter
> and redirects the user to the link's URL with Location header.
>
> The downside of this approach is that user's have no way of knowing where
> they will end up when they click on a link (the status bar displays
> redirect.php?whatever).
>
> My solution at the moment is to use window.status to display the URL that
> the user will end up at. However, this leaves no visual clue that a
> redirect will occur.
>
> Is this approach acceptable?
>


maybe you could change
redirect.php?whatever
to
redirect.php?ShowTheRealUrlHere

Kristof