Re: Netscape 2.0 beta MS windows 95 virus

Kee Hinckley (nazgul@utopia.com)
Tue, 7 Nov 1995 10:25:05 -0500


At 8:13 PM 11/6/95, Mike Meyer wrote:
>> The least we could do is come up with a proposed standard for the UserAge=
nt
>> field though.
>
>You mean like section 10.16 in draft-ietf-http-v10-spec-04.txt, which
>specifies that the User-Agent header should contain one or more
>products or comments, and section 3.7 of the same document, which
>specifies that a product is a product-token, a slash, and a
>product-version? Token and comment are likewise defined in that
>document.

That sounds about right.

>Of course, until people either 1) stop doing content negotiation based
>on user-agent, or 2) start paying attention to browsers other than
>Moscape, this is immaterial - authors (and users) of browsers that are
>going to lie about the user-agent in order to get the best document
>they can.

We have dozens of browsers in our "browser-negotiation" database.
Including items listing the features that we believe Microsoft's browser
supports. However until someone proposes a way to tell me via the headers
that this browser supports '<p align=3Dcenter>' and that this browser
supports tables but not percentage widths, and this one supports tables
within tables but not with forms in them; I'm going to have to keep doing
browser-based presentation. I can live with that. What really gets me
though is trying to figure out whether I need to send a RealAudio file, a
WAV file, an AU file or an AIFF file. Why the !@#$% aren't the major
browser manufacturors sending that helper-application information?

Kee Hinckley Utopia Inc. - Cyberspace Architects=81 617.768.5500
nazgul@utopia.com http://www.utopia.com/

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.