Defending WebObjects' Honour

Today on Backup Brain, Dori Smith said:

"The answer seems to be in Apple support document #14449, "PowerBook and iBook: Resetting Power Manager." No direct link from here, unfortunately, because (despite my high regard for those who love it) WebObjects sucks."

Thanks for the high regards Dori. B-)

But Dori... you didn't try very hard. At the bottom of the document on kbase.info.apple.com is a form, "Email this document". I sent myself the document. Right at the top of the document is:

Link to original article: PowerBook and iBook: Resetting Power Manager

Note the URL: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n14449 ... it redirected me to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449 . Both are perfectly linkable directly. And it could have been if it was a WO URL too.

something like:

http:\//kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/ WebObjects/kbase.woa/wa/showDocument?artnum=14449

(I just made that URL up, it doesn't work...)

The problem isn't WebObjects, it's whoever did the design of the support site. There's no reason why a WO site can't have bookmarkable links... none whatsoever. Hopefully Apple will just program their kbase app properly so it exposes a direct link to documents without the email step.

Written on January 18, 2002