RE: Microsoft's "I mean it" content-type parameter

> Sniffing content causes issues, for example when you want to serve an  
> HTML file with text/plain on *purpose*.  Use case: insert the source  
> code of an html document with object or iframe sent as text/plain.

Yes, this is correct. But it does not contradict my statement that this
proposal does not break anything. If anything, it lends weight to the
proposal. After all, browsers are performing sniffing anyways already,
*regardless of whether or not they are supposed to* (a phrase that can be
applied to much of browsers' behavior...). Therefore, this proposal provides
a mechanism for people on the server side to override that behavior in
precisely the scenarios that you describe.

There are situations where content sniffing makes sense. There are
situations where it doesn't. The only way to resolve it is to have a flag
that triggers a "no sniffing mode"; to do it the other way around (with a
flag that *turns on* sniffing mode) would contradict existing behavior and
therefore Break The Web.

J.Ja

Received on Friday, 4 July 2008 03:18:36 UTC