Re: <a ping>

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Maciej Stachowiak<mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>
> Are any implementors interested in implementing the ping attribute, or at
> least willing to do so? If there are no implementations and no willingness
> on the parts of implementors, then I will propose dropping this feature.
> That would resolve ISSUE-1 and ISSUE-2. My recollection is that Mozilla
> tried to implement this feature but withdrew their implementation.

To accurately describe what happened with the mozilla implementation:

As we started drawing closer to code freeze for Firefox 3, we were in
a situation where:
a) The spec changed, leaving us with a non-conforming implementation
b) There was no good proposal for a UI to turn off support
c) There were a lot of controversy around the feature, (some related
to privacy issues, some related to technical issues) not giving us
comfort regarding having the spec stabilize in time for shipping
Firefox 3.

I haven't looked at the spec lately, but I'd imagine a) is quite easy
to fix given just a little bit of time.

There's been better wording suggested to address b) (something to the
extent of a checkbox with the description "enable features to aid
websites tracking link clicks"), though we haven't discussed yet if
it's good enough. Do note that the UI to turn off the feature is quite
important, it is in fact one of the major reasons for the features
existence.

As for c), well, who knows, recent discussions have shown that it's
quite hard to establish what's controversial and what's not ;-). Jokes
aside, I think some of the privacy discussions were misguided, but I
don't know what the status is regarding the technical discussions
(specifically which HTTP method to use if I recall correctly).


All in all I'd say I don't feel strongly either way regarding if the
feature should stay or not. My main concern is actually that I'm
unconvinced that sites will use it. So far I've only heard google
express interest, though if others have heard interest from elsewhere
that would be quite good to get feedback on.

/ Jonas

Received on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 07:29:42 UTC