Re: Minimizing/avoiding User-Agent, was: SPDY Header Frames

In message <98E713A5-3869-438A-B3D3-5C9DA580DD67@opera.com>, Karl Dubost writes
:

>GET / HTTP/1.1
>Host: www.example.org
>Capabilities: <http://example.com/acmeCom/new/shiny/browser/23>

>* Some business will be abandoned. Databases will not be updated.
>  Future fail

Too bad ?  It's not like User-Agent strings are always correct
either...

>* The cache system will not be maintained. future fail.

We cannot out-standardize incompetence.

>* Some scripts will use the URL-ID (new useragent string) to block,
>  filter, redirect.

And what is the harm in this ?  If it works, it works, if it doesn't
work, it only hurts the website which took the shortcut...

>Basically exactly back to the same situation we have today.

With one very big difference:  We stop the User-Agent string
from growing another 10 characters every year...

I still think it is a very superior solution to User-Agent,
but it can obviously be modified in various ways to address
some of the concerns you raise (make it IANA registry, 
make it an ISO OID, make a repository for the files etc.)

But given that there is stuff and standards to levarage from
WAP I think we should just make it an URL and leave the
problems to other people to solve.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2012 21:10:44 UTC