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

On Thursday, July 21, 2011 12:33 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2011, Adrian Bateman wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
>
> Optional features in HTTP have caused no end of trouble and are amongst 
> the many reasons I avoid optional features so much.

What specific problems have been caused by the existence of extensions
(separate from whether or not extensions have been well defined) and what API
consequences have there been i.e. what changes to web APIs have you made
because of this?

It seems to me that HTTP has been wildly successful and its extensibility is
a large part of that.

In any case, that's a distraction - the W3C Web API should specify the things
needed to project the protocol into the web developer's hands and no more.
Discussions of the protocol, which is in Last Call, should be made in the
appropriate working group at the IETF. There's no need to profile the protocol
in the W3C API spec.

Adrian.

Received on Thursday, 21 July 2011 20:03:33 UTC