177069 - Merge the many different places that handle Links

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect, P2)

Description

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

We currently parse <link>, Link:, and <meta http-equiv="link"> in the following
places:

   HTML content sink (stylesheets, prefetching)
   XML content sink (stylesheets)
   Link toolbar (navigation)
   Browser (site icon support)

...and probably others.

This is resulting in large amounts of code duplication, and even more
importantly, a number of bugs. For example, the XML content sink doesn't care
about the "rel" attribute; ond the link toolbar and site icons don't support
HTTP headers.

We should merge all this into a single document-level API which provides uniform
access to the document's links, triggers DOM events when they change, and works
for all file types (XML, HTML, text/plain, images, etc) without the consumers
having to worry about it.

Comment 1

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Some tests:
   http://www.hixie.ch/tests/adhoc/http/link/

Comment 2

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

This would also include, or at least be related to, the unifying of CSS and XSLT
dispatch mechanisms, so that all the stylesheet linking mechanisms would work
for both XSLT and CSS.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The HTML and XML content sink got unified.  The Link toolbar is gone.  

I don't think we care about this anymore past that.