What is the best way to handle URL mappings between an RIA version and plain old HTML version of a site?

Question

So if you have a RIA version (Silverlight or Flash) and a standard HTML version (or AJAX even), should you have the same URL for both, or is it ok to have a different one for the RIA app and just redirect accordingly?

So, for instance, if you have a site (http://example.com), is it ok to have the about page URL for the RIA app be http://example.com/#/about and the html be http://example.com/about? Does it matter?

Of course if you take the route with different URLs you will need to map between them.

Answer 1

It's perfectly acceptable to use 2 different link formats. If 2 users are not seeing the same content why should they be at the same URL.

Answer 2

I guess what I really need here is not a Question/Answer format but some kind of poll. While I agree (and accepted) that because they are getting two different views of the same content, that different urls are ok, but I'm thinking more of sharing these urls out.

Thanks for the reply though!

Answer 3

The URLs of your pages denote the identity of the content. In my view, if the content is the same but the presentation varies (i.e RIA vs. HTML), then the URL should be the same and you should use some other mechanism to select between the different presentation forms. Choices of other mechanisms include cookies, content negotiation, session identifiers or, if your users are identified, a persistent user preferences model. Even using a URL argument would at least keep the root of the URL consistent (e.g. http://your.si.te/foobar vs. http://your.si.te/foobar?view=plain)

If the content of the two presentations differs in some meaningful way, then you should make that difference meaningful in the URL. Exploiting the presence or absence of #, and other such hacks, would be a mistake in my view.

Try to pick URL's that do not change over time: so-called cool URL's. This will aide the long-term usefulness of your site to your users: consider what happens if they come back to a bookmarked page in a year's time. Consistency will also help you to get a better critical mass of links or reviews of your site in del.icio.us and similar bookmarking/review sites.

Ian