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What rel values ​​have specific advantages in the <link> tag?

The <link> most often used to associate style sheets with HTML documents, but as many know, it has many other uses as well. In general, this represents some relationship between the two documents. Its beauty and curse is that everyone can make their own rel values ​​(relationship types) if they so wish. W3C has lists some of the features , other people have come up with even more , and if I want to get in my way, add <link rel="unicorns>" to my web page. He will even check.

However, adding random <link> tags to a web page only reduces bandwidth. What I want to know is what rel values ​​really provide some functionality. And not only some hypothetical functions that some future user agent can implement, but the actual specific advantages that my users can feel today .

Some of the ones that I already know:

  • a style sheet is the most common use, of course. Attach CSS style sheets.
  • canonical - indicates Google (and other search engines) where the "normal" or "canonical" URL of the page (if you can view the same page at many URLs);
  • icon - indicates the icon displayed by browsers in the URL bar and next to bookmarks.
  • home , index , content , search , glossary , help , first , start , prev , previous , next , copyright , author . They appear in the Opera navigation bar and ( I was told ) in the SeaMonkey plugin for Firefox. In addition, Firefox preloads the <link rel="next"> page, and Opera moves there when you press SPACE at the bottom of the current page. I believe that I may have seen them in Opera Mini, but I'm not sure (does anyone know how they affect mobile browsers?)
  • pingback - used to implement pingback on blogs.

Are there other possible <link> tags that really do something ? (Please also indicate what they do in your answer)

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2 answers

"alternate", at least as a modifier in the "stylesheet", does something, since the stylesheet will initially be in the "disabled" state.

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<link rel="prefetch"...> will convince some browsers to preload the linked page. Used correctly, it can significantly reduce the perceived download time along the expected path through your site.

Firefox (for one) uses it today, and Google actually uses it. (The first search result, especially if it relates to a common site, such as Wikipedia, often includes a "prefetch" link to the page found.)

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