Re: No arguments to XMLHttpRequest.send (ACTION-58)

"Jonas Sicking" <jonas@sicking.cc>
> I actually think that we should make the spec require an argument for now. 
> The whole purpose of this spec is to define what works across all browsers 
> so that users know what they can do.

I am against there being different behaviour in different methods defined by 
the Working Group, I'm open to the idea of always being required, but in 
that situation, we should always require parameters, having some methods 
e.g. .send( ) which you must specify null for and others e.g. .open() that 
are optional is simply confusing to users.

If the audience of the specification is users (which I don't think it is) 
and we do require it then the spec also needs to have an answer to the 
question of "why must I pass null?".    I don't think "buggy 
implementations" is an answer to that.

> The problem is that if people start using no-argument sends their code is 
> not going to work in firefox 1-1.5.

Authors will mostly carry on cut+pasting from examples, the specification is 
for what a new implementors should implement at a minimum to give users what 
they expect - users _expect_ not to have to use magic arguments - it's not 
the ES way.

> Things like minor inconsistencies in what onreadystatechange notifications 
> are sent and how to resolve relative uris when several windows are 
> involved are things that I'm fine with since it won't affect a lot of 
> people. But send without argument would probably be used by a lot of 
> people so that is a lot worse.

getAllResponseHeaders( )  / getResponseHeader are also used by a lot, we're 
requiring them, yet many implementations don't have support.

Cheers,

Jim.

Received on Thursday, 2 March 2006 11:44:21 UTC