Re: Microsoft IE -- it just gets better and better

Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
> > > Could most of this be handled with media type registration? E.g., if
> > > Netscape were to accept: text/html and text/netscape-2.0-html, then
> > > Microsoft's browser could express its willingness to accept either or
> > > both. Is this a workable solution?
> > I agree with others that this is probably not adequate for the
> > distinctions content providers want to make.
> 
> Just specifying text/netscape-html probably works for 90% of the
> content providers who care, as most of them seem to want nothing more
> than to distinguish netscape from the rest of the world.  Adding a
> version number to the MIME type (either as text/netscape-#.#-html or
> as text/netscape-html; version=2.0) would probably keep 90% of the
> rest happy, as they get the exact same information from this Accept:
> header as they are now getting from the User-agent: header.
> 
> MS could then achieve the same effect they got with the User-Agent:
> hack by adding a single type to the Accept: headers. This removes
> their incentive to do user-agent hacking. This should make the few
> content providers who care enough to distinguish between more than a
> fraction of a percent of the available browsers happier as well.
> 
> Yes, it's not a complete solution, and it's not perfect. But it solves
> the majority of users problems, and is a lot better than what we've
> got now.
> 
>         <mike

I am not sure if it has already been discussed, but why not have a header similiar to
Accept-Charset, like "Accept-Features:" and and a list of standard HTML features like
tables, frames, forms, etc... so that the browser can explicitly describe what it can
do?  Yes, unfortunately it is a "stopgap" solution, but it seems to cover quite a few of
the content negotiation problems.  If the server also replies with a "Content-Features:"
header, the proxy could cache copies for all further requests with the same
"Accept-Features:" header.


Just an idea.


Jeremie Miller
jmiller@mwci.net

Received on Monday, 29 January 1996 14:24:50 UTC