- From: Dave Singer <singer@apple.com>
- Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 10:28:10 -0400
- To: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>, Adam Barth <w3c@adambarth.com>
- Cc: Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>, HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>, HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
At 8:23 +0200 4/07/08, Julian Reschke wrote: >Adam Barth wrote: >>On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Julian Reschke >><julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote: >>>Adam Barth wrote: >>>>I recommend the experiment I mentioned, compiling a browser without >>>>content sniffing and actually trying to use the web for a reasonable >>>>amount of time. >>>Or switch it off in the browser, when on IE7: >>><http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/01/364581.aspx#364853>. >> >>Oh nice, I didn't know about that. I've attached an (untested) patch >>that I think turns off content sniffing in TOT Firefox for those that >>would like to try this out. > >It would be great to have that as an opt-in in FF3 -- it's bad when >the browser uses content sniffing (or needs to); but it's even worse >that page authors have no simple way to find out it happened. > I rather suspect that quite a number of sites are unwittingly relying on content sniffing right now; it's not easy to notice that you're using it, if you are a page author. An interesting but hypothetical question is whether they actually need to, or whether they could fix the site. My suspicion is that they could easily fix it. If servers were fixed to omit content-type headers for content when they don't know the type (i.e. align with the spec), and browsers were fixed to sniff only when content-type was absent, magically overnight all at once, I would expect a rough few months as the places were found and fixed, and then we'd settle down again. But it isn't going to happen... -- David Singer Apple/QuickTime
Received on Friday, 4 July 2008 14:32:32 UTC