RE: WebDAV and 404-handling

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Clemm, Geoff
> Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 11:56 PM
> To: w3c-dist-auth@w3.org
> Subject: RE: WebDAV and 404-handling
>
>
>
> If you knew that all of your clients will just display
> the literal string "404- Not Found" whenever they receive
> a 404 status (and they don't try to display the response
> body), then you'd be tempted to compose a nice error message
> page, and return 200 to avoid the poor 404 behavior of
> your clients.  This is the "dumb client workaround" approach.

I see. Is this just theoretical reasoning, or *are there* actually broken
clients like these?

> Note that I do not advocate this approach, since that makes
> your web site perform poorly with smart clients, but I
> think we should acknowledge that there are situations where
> violating the protocol in this way produces a better user
> experience.
>
> To repeat though, this is not something I advocate, and it
> violates the protocol.

Yes.

--
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

Received on Thursday, 16 January 2003 18:04:03 UTC