Re: [XMLHttpRequest] update from the editor

On Thu, 10 May 2007 17:21:30 +0200, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net>  
wrote:
> * Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> If one UA treats Content-Type:text/foobar as XML and another UA does not
>> and a site starts relying on text/foobar being treated as XML we have a
>> problem.
>
> We have very many problems of this nature right now. If I use XML 1.1 my
> site won't work in Firefox, if I use CP850 as character encoding it will
> not work in Opera, if I use Transfer-Encoding:gzip it will not work in
> Internet Explorer, if I use XMLHttpRequest.responseBody it will not work
> (I guess) in Safari.
>
> All these are reasonable features to implement and use, and the draft
> does not prohibit them in any way.

The draft clearly indicates that extensions should be discussed on  
public-webapi.


> So we are quite used to accept this
> "risk". There is also a risk that by making the specification difficult
> to understand and prohibiting reasonable implementation decisions, that
> some browser vendors simply choose to ignore it. So I am afraid simply
> the remote possibility of a "problem" is not a good enough reason.

I would hope that implementors channel such feedback to us. I don't  
believe the specification is difficult to understand, however.


> I was unable, by the way, to get any browser but Opera to recognize the
> type text/xsl as XML MIME type; Firefox from 1.5 to Minefield does not
> seem to recognize it, and neither do IE6 and IE7 (on different versions
> of Windows, and even a Linux box for Firefox); my test case works in all
> these browsers if I simply use application/xml instead. Could you give
> an example of a web page that works in IE and Firefox, yet depends on
> them recognizing text/xsl as XML MIME type for XHR purposes?

It was added for compatibility with WebKit. I don't really feel strongly  
about it, but I don't see any harm in having it as a requirement for user  
agents.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Monday, 14 May 2007 11:12:27 UTC