Re: Report: Problems with the Expires header.

On Thu, 20 Jul 1995, Koen Holtman wrote:
> This is to announce the availability of a report on problems with the
> HTTP Expires header.
> This report is available in hypertext form at
> http://www.amazon.com/expires-report.html, and in plain text form at
> http://www.amazon.com/expires-report.txt.  For discussions about the
> report, we suggest using the www-talk mailing list.

OK, I've just read through the report and my vote goes to option 2
(Discourage honouring expires in history functions).  This gives us
something to hammer browser writers over the head with when they don't
conform to the spec, doesn't break things and is simple to do.  Also just
because Netscape does it a different way now doesn't mean that we
shouldn't write the spec in a different way and hope they'll abide by it
(there's plenty of other HTML and HTTP things that will have to change in
Netscape in the next couple of years if they want to conform to the specs 
and this is a simple one for them to fix).

I don't like 3A or 3B at all as it gives the CGI author control over _my_
history list.  To me the history list is just that - my personal history
of where I've been and what I've seen (notice the tenses there people :-)
).  I'd rather not give Joe Random CGI-Author a remote control for any of
it.  If this goes in the spec then there'll be at least one 
non-conforming browser (my hacked X Mosaic! :-) ).

Otherwise I agree with the authors' disadvantages to options 1, 4A and 
4B. 

Jon

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Department of Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
*** Nothing looks so like a man of sense as a fool who holds his tongue ***

Received on Thursday, 20 July 1995 16:28:07 UTC