RE: question on URI redirect

> From:	David Choi [SMTP:david.choi@twc-asia.com]
> 
> 
> 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?
> 
	[DJW:]  Problems with it include:

	- it is not and never has been in any official HTTP specification,
	  and only in a side note in the HTML specification (it does work on
	  non-HTML pages, when used as a real HTTP header on browsers that
	  understand it, though);
	- it breaks the function of the browser back button, if used with a
	  short timeout (you get re-redirected as soon as you go back);
	- longer timeouts force a user to read a page faster than they may
	  be able to read it, however they do allow the back button to be
hit
	  twice;
	- older browsers don't understand it; there may be some current ones
too;
	- lynx considers that refreshing should not be timed by the content 
	  author for the reasons given above, and therefore generates it as
a link;
	- there are perfectly good ways of doing redirects which work with
any
	  HTTP/1.0 upwards browser (if you can set Refresh as a real header,
you 
	  can do real redirects) - in principle these can even automatically
update
	  bookmarks.

	One reservation:
	- if it is commercially impossible to do redirects properly (by
configuring
	  the server), this tactic will work in more cases than the reason
mis-
	  feature of using Javascript to redirect the browser.

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>

Received on Wednesday, 9 August 2000 12:57:50 UTC