- From: Daniel LaLiberte <liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
- Date: Tue, 7 Nov 95 22:25:17 CST
- To: masinter@parc.xerox.com
- Cc: www-talk@w3.org
I think this is a great idea Larry. From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com> There's a list of browsers/browser strings. RA registers the browsers, and, for each browser string, the list of features supported. http://RA/features?<browser> returns a text/plain list of the features supported for <browser>. But the URL for the browser description could be any URL whatsoever, different for each browser. The descriptions would be generally distributed around the network, supported by the suppliers of the browsers. Better, for reliability and scalability, would be a URN and replication of the possible URLs to look up the description. But to further distribute browser descriptions, servers could ask browsers to provide the info if the server doesn't have it cached already. But a signature would have to be attached to such info offered by browsers since otherwise a malicious user would be able to spoof servers into using the wrong info. Web servers might have to contact RA if they come across a browser they've never seen before to find out what features it supports, but the server could cache that information. Most servers will eventually get hit by most kinds of browsers. Have you ever had a look at the agent-log in NCSA's httpd? Still, the total database is pretty small. dan
Received on Tuesday, 7 November 1995 23:26:16 UTC