Re: XMLHttpRequest Comments from W3C Forms WG

On 11/25/09 3:46 PM, Klotz, Leigh wrote:
> The XMLHttpRequest functionality described in this document has
> previously been well isolated, and in fact XHR itself has beeen
> implemented by a number of different desktop browser vendors by
> copying the original implementations.

Note that these were all building on a common reverse-engineered base, 
and that the implementations were far from interoperable.

> In summary, we feel that the dependencies between HTML5 and
> XMLHttpRequest are in the wrong direction.  We ask that the
> dependency on HTML5 be eliminated

The main dependencies, I believe, are on the Window object and the 
security sandboxing behavior that web browsers have.  How do you propose 
such dependencies be eliminated?

> and that the XMLHttpRequest
> Working Draft be changed to specify minimum requirements for
> integration in the areas for which it depends on HTML5.

The XHR spec needs to describe the precise behavior of things like 
same-origin requests.  However nothing specifies the concept of 
"origins" outside the HTML5 specification.  Should XHR simply say that 
something else needs to define origins, in this situation, without 
referring to the one thing that actually does define them?  There are no 
plans for anyone other than HTML5 to define them at this point, and the 
HTML5 definition is not limited to HTML documents.

-Boris

Received on Wednesday, 25 November 2009 20:54:36 UTC