Re: ftp URLs and browser behaviour

On Tue, Aug 19, 1997 5:26 pm, Larry Masinter
<mailto:masinter@parc.xerox.com> wrote:
>There's no way to say "prompt the user for a name & password".
>Some browsers do it if anonymous fails, others don't.
>If you want to add that as a requirement, then you'd have
>to say so.
>
>If you want to add a new syntax, or say
>   ftp://:@<host>/<urlpath>
>
>means "prompt the user if sending the empty string fails",
>then we'd have to recycle *those* at proposed, too.
>
>In any case, nobody uses the ";type=d" thing we added 
>to the Proposed Standard, I don't think, so I'd like to
>just drop it as we move forward.
>
>Larry
>

As you say, it looks like there is no way currently to access an FTP 
resource which is password protected without placing a valid username 
in the URL.  This is somewhat limiting.

Thinking about it, the behaviour I'm looking for would simply be a 
mirror of that when requesting an HTTP resource which requires 
authentication.

Regards,

Steve.