Quoth Ethan Grammatikidis: > On 15 Jun 2010, at 11:24, Nick wrote: > > Because that way you can do content negotiation. Granted, that isn't > > much used today, > > Why not? With more international businesses than ever on the web and > the internet spread further over the globe than ever before, and with > content negotiation having been around for such a long time, why is it > hardly used? Perhaps because it sucks?
I always presumed it was because web browsers never really gave it a meaningful interface. Same, for that matter, with HTTP basic authentication. > > and it would make sense to make content-type > > optional, but I like the idea of content negotiation. Being able to > > e.g. get the original markdown for the content of a page, without > > the HTML crap, navigation etc, would be really nice in a lot of > > cases. > > Maybe, but I doubt the majority of web designers would like you > looking at their source, as simple as it might be, and the likelihood > of big businesses letting you get at their web page sources seems very > low. Maybe I'm just terminally cynical. Sigh, no, you're largely right. Though wikipedia or some of the more open blog engines are examples where this is less likely to be true. > > I get the impression the W3C expected content negotiation to > > be used a lot more when they wrote the HTTP 1.1 spec. > > Erm, yeah. The W3C seems to have expected a lot of things would be > practical and useful. Well, I prefer the W3C's vision of the web to the one designers and marketers have created. Incidentally, can anyone recommend a good gopher client? I missed it the first time 'round, and I'd be curious to see a different paradigm of web type thing.
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