At 10:38 24/02/2001 -0800, Duane Clark wrote:
>Simon P. Lucy wrote:
>
>>At 09:01 24/02/2001 +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
>>
>>> > The average consumer (and me too) will say it works with NS4.76 or IE5
>>> > but not with Mozilla, and therefore Mozilla is broke. For perfectly good
>>> > evidence of this, take a look at the bug page at how many times this has
>>> > been resubmitted. It is the largest number I have so far stumbled across
>>> > (though I have not looked at a lot).
>>>There's a bigger issue here. Who do we respect more? Old and broken
>>>browsers, or W3C and other internet standards (such as RFCs)? If we "find
>>>a meaning" for this sort of broken URL, what else should we guess at
>>>interpreting?
>>>Computers have to read this stuff, not humans.
>>
>>Putting up a dialog with the offending URL giving them the chance to make
>>their own decision seems fine to me. Software can make more than
>>reasonable attempts at trying to interpret incomplete information,
>>witness typing the root of a domain name and getting
>>http://www.root-domain.com . If truth be told I can't really see the
>>downside of interpolating a '/' after http:/ but if it is too far a leap
>>of reasoning to let it through let the user decide.
>
>The downside is that virtually every web page with this notation will be
>broken. And the reason for that is that the web page creators have tested
>their web pages with a browser that does not interpolate the extra slash,
>and they almost certainly are unaware that they are violating an RFC.
>Maybe that is their fault, but the average user will likely blame Mozilla.
If they get the chance to fix it on the fly it might be irritating but less
so than just emitting an error and if the description is well enough worded
the true fault will be understood.
Simon
>--
>My real email is akamail.com@dclark (or something like that).
>
>
===================================================
If I'd known I would spend so much time sorting and rearranging boxes
I'd have paid more attention at kindergarten
S.P. Lucy
