Re: Of Authoritative Metadata and Content-Type

User-Agents aren't the only applications that use Content-Type on the  
Web. It's discouraging to see people advocating a move away from HTTP  
header-based metadata, just when there are interesting and useful  
things that intermediaries can do with them.

Also, I'd note that as of OSX 10.4.6, Safari passes almost all of  
those tests. IIRC MSFT is also fixing IE7 to be stricter. Should we  
give up just when things are getting better?


On 2006/04/14, at 10:30 AM, Norman Walsh wrote:

> I noticed this the other day:
>
>   http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1144794177&count=1
>
> Ian observes
>
>      Browsers and other user agents largely ignore the HTTP
>      Content-Type header, relying on undefined sniffing heuristics to
>      determine what the content of a page really is.
>
> and provides a very useful set of test data. However, I find his
> conclusion
>
>      I think it may be time to retire the Content-Type header, putting
>      to sleep the myth that it is in any way authoritative, and
>      instead have well-defined content-sniffing rules for Web content.
>
> more than a little worrisome. At the very least, it suggests that some
> significant applications don't consider authoritative metadata, well,
> authoritative.
>
>                                         Be seeing you,
>                                           norm
>
> -- 
> Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems,  
> Inc.
> NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended
> recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.
> Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is  
> prohibited.
> If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by
> reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

--
Mark Nottingham
mnot@yahoo-inc.com

Received on Friday, 14 April 2006 17:42:08 UTC