Re: editor's note on the navigator property

> On Jul 17, 2017, at 19:33 , Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jul 17, 2017, at 6:42 AM, David Singer <singer@mac.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I don’t understand this editor’s note in the draft:
>> 
>> "the doNotTrack property which now appears to be useless”
>> 
>> Why is it useless?  It computes the header that would be sent to the domain of the requestor. The result is impacted by (at least):
>> 
>> a) the user’s general preference
>> b) whether there is a web-wide exception that I have requested and been granted (ok, this is something I both should know and could verify in other ways)
>> c) whether I am embedded in a site that has requested a site-specific exception that includes me (OK, I could try to confirm the duplet formed by the top-level browsing context and me, and confirm that exception, but what a hassle)
>> 
>> There are (at least) these three to check, and I don’t believe a script has any other way to get (a).
>> 
>> What am I missing?
> 
> The doNotTrack property originally contained the user's general preference.
> 
> Later it was changed to be a dynamic value based on what DNT value would
> be sent to the document's domain.  The problem is that the DNT value sent
> to a given domain might be site-specific, so it depends not only on the
> document's domain but also the context in which the domain is referenced.
> 
> In order to be useful to scripts, the value should be defined with respect
> to the tuple [context, target]:
> 
>  context = top-level browsing context (if the document is within an iframe)
>  target  = current browsing context (domain of the effective script origin)
> 
> and then it would be usable for things like scripts within iframes.
> 
> In any case, the definition needs to be improved so that this
> is clear to browser developers expecting to implement the property.

Yes, it is the header that would be sent to the script origin for a resource embedded in the current browsing context, taking into account the user’s general preference and any granted exceptions.  Or something like that

> Also, we should note that the property might only be set when the
> browsing context is loaded, so don't expect it to change immediately
> after calling the storeException API.
> 
> ....Roy
> 

Dave Singer

singer@mac.com

Received on Tuesday, 18 July 2017 15:39:35 UTC