Re: XHR LC comment: Accept header went from MUST NOT to SHOULD

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 15 May 2008 20:56:42 +0200, Laurens Holst 
> <lholst@students.cs.uu.nl> wrote:
>> Why was this changed? Why should user agents pretend that they know what
>> kind of resource the user expects by setting an Accept header that is
>> unreliable? FWIW, Internet Explorer and Safari set the (reasonably
>> acceptable */*), but it would be better to leave it out entirely. Also 
>> see:
>>
>> http://www.grauw.nl/blog/entry/470
> 
> It was pointed out by another Last Call comment that not setting the 
> Accept header causes servers to break. Given the results above I suppose 
> we could require that for XMLHttpRequest purposes it is at least always 
> set to */*. Would that work?

Not setting the Accept header means the same thing as setting it to 
"*/*" 
(<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/rfc2616.html#rfc.section.14.1.p.8>), 
so these servers simply are buggy.

I think it's better not to add more workarounds, but to let the XHR 
clients deal with these broken servers, by explicitly setting the header.

BR, Julian

Received on Friday, 16 May 2008 09:32:35 UTC