I was reminded today of something interesting which happened a while back with a web application. It was nothing special, just a list of articles with links to "edit" or "delete" next to them, your average CRUD style interface.

Anyhow, one afternoon pages started to go missing - for no apparent reason the entire database was cleaned out (don't worry, we had backups).  After analysing the server logs, I found the user-agent visiting these links was infact the alexa toolbar following each and every link for search/rank purposes! Because the user was logged in, the toolbar had no problems loading them up, including the "delete" links.

Unexpected, yes. But it was a good lesson in interface design. Common links are not meant to be "actions". If the edit/delete links were infact, buttons then the alexa robot would never have followed them. To summerise, if you have something that is performing an "action", then it's best practice to use a form button. Just something to keep in mind, as I know a lot of "caching" toolbars (such as googles webaccelerator) also have this same behaviour.