3 ms·

Interesting, but given it’s a link already controlled by the website I don’t see the difference between ping and simply linking to a tracking URL like google al

Interesting, but given it’s a link already controlled by the website I don’t see the difference between ping and simply linking to a tracking URL like google already does. This just allows websites to retain proper semantics. Feel free to educate me though :)

0x0 8y ago
document.cookie is also already controlled by the website, but due to everyone <script src>'ing 3rd party trackers like GA it looks like they felt the need to limit this api. So why remove the possibility for blocking the same scripts from doing foreach('a').attr('ping','3rdpartytracker/uniqueId/'+this.href)?
- eridius 8y ago
  Nothing's stopping those scripts today from converting all links to bouncing through a redirect domain for tracking, and yet scripts aren't doing that.
  - 0x0 8y ago
    That has UX implications, with the mouseover statusbar link target popup and the right/middle mouse click to copy-url/open-in-new-tab features making it much more obvious.
    - acdha 8y ago
      Okay, so imagine it’s adding click event handlers which use XHR/Beacon to avoid the user-visible rewriting. That’s the same impact but everything is slower and you have edge cases where navigation fails with no user feedback at all.