rel-embed - IndieWeb
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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
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 2026-04-24, 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:
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 (
or
) 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.
I had imagined that figues would be reprented[sic] as
Figure
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.
(found via
2019-07-17 tweet
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
element.
… {{img alt here}} is more flexible than
2015-10-09
: in response to
Ade Oshineye tweet
… If AMP said markup images
Alt text
it'd be valid HTML & useful w/o JS as well as fast.
No further advocacy or mentions since then (9+ years ago).
See Also
embed
page for more examples and brainstorming
oEmbed
Retrieved from "
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