using id's vs names in the url

[Gervase Markham]

Vlad Dascalu wrote:
> Albert Ting wrote:
> 
>> Is it consider bad form to use id's in the URL?  That is, instead of
>>
>>    http://bugzilla/editproducts.cgi?action=edit&product=foobar
>>
>> we do
>>    http://bugzilla/editproducts.cgi?action=edit&product_id=30
>>  
>>
> I don't think that it's bad form, nope. If anything, it improves 
> performance, shortens the URL on the average case, and eliminates 
> encoding issues. It makes the URL harder to read on another hand, but 
> URLs wheren't made for that I guess :)

They may not have been, but they have ended up being, and we need to 
take account of that. I've found it handy in the past to be able to read 
a query URL and determine exactly what the query is.

I also often (with the help of autocomplete) type
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Bugzilla
(or some other product) into my URL bar. So we shouldn't break that.

Gerv