Re: [Bug 6684] Disregard of RFC 4329 and IANA MIME Media Types

On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:23:40 -0400, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:

> Sierk Bornemann wrote:
>> Because I am unsatisfied and displeased, how bug #6684 is handled and  
>> put down, I put this bug #6684 out of the edge of Bugzilla and onto the  
>> table of the WG to be noticed (and eventually discussed) by a broader  
>> audience:
>>  [Bug 6684] Disregard of RFC 4329 and IANA MIME Media Types
>> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6684
>>  Thanks in advance for your interest, your opinions and helpful  
>> suggestions are welcome.
>
> Unless there is a problem with the officially registered MIME types,  
> HTML5 should recommend using them.

Do you mean recommending for just serving or do you also mean for @type for <script>?

If the former, there's no problem doing that. If the latter, consider:

Serving scripts as application/javascript is not a problem.

Using <script type="application/javascript" is not a problem for Firefox, Opera and Safari. (Not sure about other mobile browsers that execute JS etc.)

1. IE needs to be patched for <!DOCTYPE html> so that <script type="application/javascript" and other types mentioned in the RFC execute the JS code. (But see #3)

2. HTML5 needs to recommended RFC4329 mime types (like application/javascript) everywhere and say that for <script> *handling*, omitting @type implies a value of "text/javascript".

3. The HTML5 authoring guide needs to suggest using <script type="application/javascript" or suggest omitting @type if dealing with browsers that don't execute JS when presented with <script type="application/javascript".

4. Validator should warn like #3 when necessary.

5. Authoring tools would have to always omit @type for <script> by default to assume they want to support older browsers.

Doing that seems like it'd sort things out.

Now, I've never experienced any benefits of using application/javascript so I haven't experienced what it's suppose to solve. However, if it really does solve problems, since it works fine in 3 out of the 4 main browsers, HTML5 should reference and recommend it.

If it doesn't solve any problem ditch the RFC. However, unless Firefox, Opera and Safari are going to remove support for those types, those types still need to be *handled*, in which case, the RFC is at least useful and should stay, but perhaps only be referenced in the handling section.

-- 
Michael

Received on Thursday, 2 April 2009 09:17:41 UTC