Re: content negotiation
Andrew Daviel (andrew@andrew.triumf.ca)
Thu, 1 May 1997 17:37:04 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 17:37:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew Daviel <andrew@andrew.triumf.ca>
To: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: content negotiation
In-Reply-To: <199705012138.RAA04757@iniki.gsfc.nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970501173239.16300R-100000@andrew.triumf.ca>
On Thu, 1 May 1997, Jeff de la Beaujardiere wrote:
> Content negotiation will be exceedingly useful when generating HTML
> dynamically and will perhaps be used most often in that context. It's
> certainly much better than the horrible practice of checking the user agent
> field. However, I don't know whether the negotiation scheme would allow
> different elements of the same static document to be handled well. I think
> the server must respond with the entire document, at which point it's up to
> the UA to display what it can.
User-agent checking scripts don't cache properly, meaning they're either
slow bandwidth hogs for overseas users, or get the agent wrong.
HTTP/1.1 supports content negotiation and cache properly. You get the
whole document (or image, etc.).
You can always use e.g. JavaScript if supported to treat UAs differently
Andrew Daviel