If you're talking about content negotiation in the way I think you are (by
the values passed to the server in the 'Accept' HTTP header) and not by
getting the value of the 'User-Agent' HTTP header, then I'm all for it.
One of my recent thoughts was to check if the UA had 'text/xml' or
'application/xhtml+xml' in the Accept header, and sending them back the
appropriate mime-type for XHTML, while everyone else gets text/html. I'd
even thought of going to the length of using PHP's output buffering to
rewrite the XHTML into HTML4 for the text/html version so that it's totally
valid, but that just seems like way too much work for so little gain :)
(also, the W3C validator doesn't send an Accept header, so it would be
getting HTML4 - still valid, but not exactly ideal to say a site is valid
XHTML then have the W3C say it's HTML4 :))
To me, this doesn't seem like a hack at all, it is exactly what the Accept
header is for - serving up different content types depending on what the
browser (says) it supports.
I'm sure you could also do the same with XML, and either send XML plus a
stylesheet to UAs that support it, and do a server-side transform to HTML
for those that don't (There are probably a number of flaws in this though
(probably the biggest being that you'd have to write two versions of your
presentation code), and I'll be stuufed if I can think of a single reason
*to* do it apart from the 'hey, cool, I can do it' factor)
/me should get back to work now...
--
Lindsay Evans.
Developer,
Red Square Productions.
[p] 8596.4000
[f] 8596.4001
[w] www.redsquare.com.au
-Original Message-
From: Ben Boyle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, 9 October 2003 10:02 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Targeting IE5
I would have thought the best way to target a browser (be it IE5 or other)
was content negotiation. Detect the browser and serve content in the
appropriate format. Does anyone else get the feeling this technique is
rarely used whilst cruder methods proliferate?
IMHO, web servers can do a lot more than just serve files and should be
exploited for all they are worth - and that's plenty. I feel this
cornerstone of the web is oft overlooked, much to the detriment of the
online experience when cruder technologies are called on to compensate.
Maybe it's just too difficult for developers to get access to webserver
configuration, or too tedious to produce content in multiple
formats? Gotta
weight that against the time and effort we've all invested in workarounds
and hacks though ... The right tool for the job. One can't solve every
problem with a hammer.
cheers
Ben
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