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.
--
My real email is akamail.com@dclark (or something like that).
