Re: Referer URI MUST NOT include a fragment

Vincent Murphy wrote:
> During a discussion [0] about why Youtube uses ?feature=related in its 
> URIs, I observed that the Referer header URI, if it included a fragment 
> identifier, could be used identify the anchor used to initiate a GET. 
> This would be useful for
> 
> - analysing anchor popularity,
> - eliminating the need for workarounds and hacks like Youtube 
> ?feature=related
> - encourage cleaner, canonical URIs.
> 
> I did a search of discussions around the HTTP protocol, but was not able 
> to find the origin of the statement from RFC2616 Section 14.32 [1], 
> paraphrased in the subject of this message. This statement is also in 
> draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-05, section 10.6 [2].
> 
> I seek links to the discussion or rationale and origin of this 
> statement, or failing that, comments about how allowing fragment 
> identifiers in Referer URIs would enhance or violate web architecture.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Vincent Murphy

Reminder: if we *did* want to relax this in HTTPbis, we will need to 
investigate whether relaxing the value range can break existing code.

BR, Julian

Received on Sunday, 1 March 2009 11:20:41 UTC