- From: Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>
- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 14:55:17 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
- Cc: Roy Fielding <fielding@beach.w3.org>, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com, Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
On Wed, 6 Sep 1995, Koen Holtman wrote: > Roy Fielding: > >There are two ways to do content negotiation: preemptive or reactive. > >I think preemptive content negotiation is doomed to failure in the > >long term, which is why I added the 300 response code. When the > >day comes that preemptive content negotiation (Accept* headers) are > >more costly than reactive (an extra round-trip carrying a URC), > >then browsers and server can switch without changing the protocol. > > I think preemptive content negotiation on *all* types a browser > supports is too costly already. Correct - but you don't need to do it for all, just the ones you would prefer to see. If a browser *can* do HTML 3.0, it says "I can do HTML 3.0", the server might come back and say "sorry (406), I only have HTML 2.0 and a PDF version of this file", so the browser goes "okay, I'll take the HTML 2.0". The browser should decide where that tradeoff point is for itself - the tradeoff between being conservative in what types you declare you can accept, and the overhead of getting a 406. Not everything has to go in the Accept header, just what you'd really like to see. Brian --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- brian@organic.com brian@hyperreal.com http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/
Received on Wednesday, 6 September 1995 15:00:56 UTC