"Following" is an explictly named document (by the author) using <LINK
REL="Precedes" HREF="..."> whereas "Next" is a logical beast based on the
users own navigation history. There are three different navigation models
at work here:
#1 History Navigation (per NCSA Mosaic): Back/Forward
These simply take you forward and back in your history
#2 Logicial Navigation (per Midas): Next/Previous
The info.cern.ch info explains it as:
When the current node is one of several nodes linked to the back
node, go to the next of those nodes. Leave the Back node unchanged.
Modify the history to remove the current node and replace it with
the "next" (new current) node.
Basically, you build a list of all the destination links in a
document in the same order they appear. The users selects one,
you go to it. The user selects "Next", so you go to the "Back"
document and having remembered which link the user just selected you
pick the "next" one in the list. Sounds complicated but it's
actually pretty simple (and useful).
#3 Explicit Navigation (per nobody yet): Parent/Child/Preceding/Following
These are simply the REL/REV types of Subdocument and Precedes
Parent/Child are used for defining the structure of a document set
(like a hierarchical outline). Preceding/Following are for traversing
information in a linear fashion defined by the author (for reading a
book).
For more information about navigational techniques see
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/DesignIssues/Navigation.html
Maybe this UI will work, I was trying to express the relationships with
my diagram but that might be overly complicated. I like your table layout
though Pgup/Pgdown don't quite seem to fit. Maybe we need icons. The
corners navigate the explicit Subdocument and Precedes links.
Up | Back | Preceding
---------+---------+-----------
Previous | Home | Next
---------+---------+-----------
Down | Forward | Following
The important thing is that browsers do *something* so we can start
playing around and seeing what works and what doesn't.
--sanders