Re: question on URI redirect

On Wed, Aug 09, 2000, David Choi wrote:
> I was reading the section 7.4.4 Meta Data of the W3C recommendation on HTML
> 4.01
> ( http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/global.html#h-7.4.4)
> and come across this Note:
> Note. Some user agents support the use of META to refresh the current page
> after a specified number of seconds, with the option of replacing it by a
> different URI. Authors should not use this technique to forward users to
> different pages, as this makes the page inaccessible to some users. Instead,
> automatic page forwarding should be done using server-side redirects.
> 
> Can someone help me with more details why doing redirection in this way is
> inaccessible to some users?  and which specific user agents that do not
> support this approach of redirection?

In the same section:

   User agents are not required to support meta data mechanisms. For
   those that choose to support meta data, this specification does not
   define how meta data should be interpreted.

So user agents not supporting meta tags could simply strip out the
information and people won't see your redirection.

A redirection should be made at the HTTP level, as defined in RFC2616[1].
You can configure your server to do that. For example:
- with Jigsaw, use a Relocate frame[2].
- with Apache, use mod_rewrite[3].

  1. http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10#sec10.3
  2. http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/Doc/User/redirection.html#L179
  3. http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

-- 
Hugo Haas, Webmaster, Systems Team - W3C/MIT
mailto:hugo@w3.org - tel:+1-617-452-2092

Received on Wednesday, 9 August 2000 12:45:43 UTC