RE: Draft [URL] reference update to informative text

It's true; MDN is an imperfect wiki. However, for information about implementations of URLUtils, it is a good source for responding to Tim's question of where to find that Firefox and Chrome implement URLUtils.

Your issues seem to be with the content of the rest of the page, or with the concept of MDN in general, to which I have no response.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Ruby [mailto:rubys@intertwingly.net] 
Sent: Thursday, October 9, 2014 16:32
To: www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: Draft [URL] reference update to informative text

On 10/09/2014 03:44 PM, Domenic Denicola wrote:
> From: Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org]
>
>> Since when?
>>
>> Is there anything like a public implementation report which tracks that?
>
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL#Browser_compatibi
> lity
>
> (Chrome 32, Firefox 26)

That page describes URLUtils.pathname as "a DOMString containing an initial '/' followed by the path of the URL."

Here are test cases where Firefox 32 and Chrome 37 produce different results, neither of which start with an initial '/':

http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/8e738a5350
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/010d3b8e54
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/f95c57aa35

There are also plenty of examples where the URL is badly formed and an empty string is returned by both.  A few examples:

http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/8e4dba714b
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/a7e821cc81
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/aa0a198c57
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/05/urltest-results/723aa80622

>> What about other browsers?  Do they have plans?
>
> Yes, IE has it marked as "Under Consideration."

The developer.mozilla.org page indicates that Chrome, Firefox, and IE has "basic support", without defining what that means.  I will note that out of the 256 tests defined for URL spec, there isn't a single one where those three browsers return the same value for pathname.

Before anybody attempts to infer what point I am trying to make, I'll make it clear:

* Readers of this page will be done a disservice in that the information isn't technically accurate nor does it adequately capture the state of interop.

- Sam Ruby

P.S.  I didn't pick this as an example.

P.P.S.  For those who want to play with this data, I've placed the current results in JSON for at:

http://intertwingly.net/stories/2014/10/09/urltest-results.json

Received on Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:41:35 UTC