rel-embed
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rel-embed is draft spec for the rel value of embed for a page to link to a version of itself that is suitable for embedding in other pages, such as a small contact card for an about page, or plain post content with author and date for post permalink.
- Status
- This is a draft Living Specification that has implementations.
- Latest Published Version
- https://indieweb.org/rel-embed
- Participate
- discussion on #indieweb-dev (on Libera IRC)
- Editors
- Tantek Çelik
- Authors
- Other contributors: revision history
- License
- Per CC0, to the extent possible under law, the editor(s) and contributors have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. In addition, as of 2024-12-22, the editor(s) and contributors (2015-04-07 onward) have made this specification available under the Open Web Foundation Agreement Version 1.0.
Why
See embed#Why.
How to
How to link to an embed version of a page
In the the head of a post permalink page or home page, create a link with rel=embed, e.g. using markup like this, to the embed version of the page:
<link rel="embed" href="{permalink}/embed" />
where {permalink} is the original post permalink URL (or home page).
The "{permalink}/embed" is only a convention, and any URL on the same site may be used.
How to discover rel embed
Consuming code must look for a link element (<a> or <link>) with rel attribute with an embed value and use that to auto-discover the embedding URL at the href of that link element to present as a UI to publishers etc.
Historical proposal
rel embed to display an image
There was an old proposal (never implemented) to use a rel value of embed as a verb, that is as an instruction to the browser to embed the referenced URL when displaying that page. This verb instruction meaning is different from the current (2024) proposed noun relationship meaning. Since there was no support of it, it is unlikely there are any instances of this legacy usage, and thus there should be no problems with re-using embed to mean something new.
- 1993-02-26 TimBL: Re: proposed new tag: IMG proposed using rel=embed as a verb, though realized its obvious limitation of (inability to handle) embedding icons (other images) which themselves would be hyperlinked to other URLs.
(found via 2019-07-17 tweet)I had imagined that figues would be reprented[sic] as
<a name=fig1 href="fghjkdfghj" REL="EMBED, PRESENT">Figure </a>
where the relation ship[sic] values mean
EMBED Embed this here when presenting it
PRESENT Present this whenever the source document
is presented
Note that you can have various combinations of these, and if
the browser doesn't support either one, it doesn't break.
A[sic] see that using this as a method for selectable icons means nesting
anchors. Hmmm.
This unimplemented proposal was re-raised on Twitter over 20 years later, twice, by user "@Meekostuff":
- 2014-09-02: in response to 2014-09-01 Ars Technica: How a new HTML element will make the Web faster (tweet) about the new
<picture>element.… <a rel="embed img" href="{{img src here}}">{{img alt here}}</a> is more flexible than <picture> and is backwards compat.
- 2015-10-09: in response to Ade Oshineye tweet
… If AMP said markup images
<a rel="embed image" href="...">Alt text</a>
it'd be valid HTML & useful w/o JS as well as fast.
No further advocacy or mentions since then (9+ years ago).