One of the areas we have been thinking about for sometime here at Folknology is Ultra Deep Linking (UDL). As you are probably are aware (assuming you subscribe or peruse regularly) we are working on web based products of the numerical kind. A number of posts over recent months have talked about this side of web apps, and they seem to be in short supply. However these apps are on the rise with WikiCalc, NumSum , iRows just to name a few albeit that they exist within a narrow numerical web space we could refer to as Web SpreadSheets (WSS). Most of these lend themselves heavily toward traditional spreadsheets reborn on the web not quite what we were thinking. We envisage something different from that, we don't se a spreadsheet application per se rather we imagine a spreadsheet component embedded within a page. This component would operate within XHTML powered by javascript (This isn't our project by the way just one we would like to see which could significantly enhance our products). The spreadsheet itself in data form would be a Microformat that we refer to internally as a 'websheet'. It looks just like a regular html table with some special class attributes and practices (following the Microformat way). But if it was a recognised Microformat we could add CSS and javascript standard behaviors that make it act like numsum or irow within the page. These spreadsheats could be inserted in one's blog or any web page in either a read or read/write manner. But here's a the clever bit, using a REST pattern we can make the data within the websheet individually addressable. Stay with me for a moment, assume we have a websheet imbedded in a page with an id attribute of 'mysheet' :

1. The address of the page is : http://www.mydomain.com/mypagewithsheet.html
2. The websheet via - http://www.mydomain.com/mypagewithsheet.html#mysheet
3. Any cell via - http://www.mydomain.com/mypagewithsheet.html#mysheet?row=2&col=B
4. A selection of cells - http://www.mydomain.com/mypagewithsheet.html#mysheet?selection=B1:C5

This means also of course any cell within a sheet can address any cell on the internet or selection therein. as well as applying this as parameters to cell functions etc..

This is what we mean by Ultra Deep Linking - burrowing deep not just into the page for
links/anchors but directly inside of a Microformat instance (websheet) within a page/blog/web app etc..

I am hoping Dan at WikiCalc and the others at iRows,NumSum and new players etc.. will be moving towards this concept as we will soon be producing fodder for these new kinds of in page web numerical web apps.. Now just imagine how much easier it all becomes with LiveClipboard support for linking at table, selection and cell levels how easy and powerful is that ? Also imagine not just Follknology's web apps producing this kind of embed-able interactive data but everyone else's web apps following the same pattern. Now I hope your getting a glimpse of what we have been working towards for some time now, we will enumerate more of this soon, stay tuned..

Update : Oops, forgot to include Numbler in that web spreadsheet category .

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