[Catalyst] Re: How are you handling multiformat URL

Jonathan Rockway jon at jrock.us
Wed Nov 29 18:01:11 GMT 2006


John Napiorkowski wrote:
> Also there are really stupid user agents that need the
> extension.  For example I have an application that
> embeds some flash video.  Now this uses the video
> component that is part of flash 8 or something and it
> seems to absolutely require that the file name of the
> flash video be "something.flv".  Even if I set the
> content type to video/x-flv which is what the
> documents say, and I specify a filename in the content
> disposition unless that file has flv at the end it
> just won't play.  So unfortunately we need to deal
> with this, but also set things up right so that when
> the user agents get smarter we are already set up for
> it.

This is the problem with using the good features of HTTP.  People that
don't read (or worse, aren't aware of the existence of) the standards
are doomed to implement them incorrectly.  *sigh*.

There's a similar problem with IE sending */* as the first thing in
Accept header and then text/html as a lower priority option.  This means
that if your application outputs application/xhtml+xml by default (which
it should), then IE will claim that it wants that instead of degraded
text/html.  This is incorrect, of course, because IE chokes on XML (but
insists that you send it XML anyway). *sigh*.

Here's an analogy - a non-native speaker of English comes up to you and
asks a question in perfect English.  You reply in English.  The person
asking the question then gets upset because he expected you to answer in
French.  That's what IE does.

My solution?  If the standard is over 5 years old, use it.  If nobody
uses new features, we're going to be stuck in 1993 forever.

If you care about revenue coming in from IE users, just send some google
ads along with the "your browser sucks, and so do you" page ;)

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway

-- 
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$,.=reverse qw[Jonathan tsu rehton lre rekca Rockway][$_].[split //,
";$;"]->[$_].q; ;for 1..4;$,=~s;^.;;;$,});$;->setup;



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