Re: NEW ISSUE: content sniffing

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com> wrote:
>> When different user agents use different sniffing algorithms, content
>> authors pay a large cost, both in terms of compatibility and in terms
>> of security.  For user agents that wish to perform sniffing, I think
>> we'd be doing the Web a service by specifying which algorithm they
>> should use.
>
> I agree, which is why I suggested a link from 2616bis to the
> algorithm.  Do you feel that to be insufficient?  If so, why?

I don't have a strong opinion about which document should contain the
algorithm, but I think we're better off making the algorithm normative
(for those agents that wish to sniff) rather than informative.  That
will help prevent developers of sniffing user agents from implementing
divergent sniffing algorithms.

Adam

Received on Tuesday, 31 March 2009 20:03:17 UTC