RE: [websockets] Making optional extensions mandatory in the API (was RE: Getting WebSockets API to Last Call)

On Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:31 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:26:21 +0200, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com>
> wrote:
> > What do others (Anne?, Maciej?, ...) think about this issue?
>
> I don't know enough about the WebSocket protocol, but optional web  
> platform features suck. They will become mandatory following the typical  
> "dominant implementation does it and we want to work on the same sites"  
> scenario.

For platform features that directly affect web developers' pages that might
sometimes be true. However, compression is also optional in HTTP and it
doesn't appear to have caused problems or made some sites work and others
not based on some dominant implementation.

There is still discussion in the IETF about whether stream or frame based
compression is best. That's the right place to have that discussion. There
are also implementers that want extensions for other things, such as
multiplexing. This is a protocol layer handshake below the API and the API
simply provides information about what was agreed.

Adrian.

Received on Thursday, 21 July 2011 17:03:01 UTC