Subject: Re: Browser behaviour

From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 22:39:25 +0100

* John Panzer <[email-masked]> [2006-01-30 22:05]:
>This means that users might possibly end up subscribing to
>something of type application/xml if they copy and paste URL
>#3... but we could also make this client dependent so that, for
>example, everything other than known web browsers get
>application/atom+xml.

How about this simple rule? If the request for a feed has a
referrer, which aggregator presumably[1] never do, then serve as
`application/xml` with all cache control headers set to expire
immediately; otherwise, send as `application/xhtml+xml`. (Expiry
prevents intermediaries from caching it with the wrong MIME
type.)

[1] My server logs confirm this assumption for at least 20
different popular aggregators.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>

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From: "John Panzer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:42:18 -0800

> prevents intermediaries from caching it with the wrong MIME

Does this work for bookmarks?  (Thinking here especially of IE bookmarks 
saved to a desktop and double-clicked to start the browser...)

-- 
John Panzer
Sr. Technical Manager
http://journals.aol.com/panzerjohn/abstractioneer

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From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 00:18:16 +0100

* John Panzer <[email-masked]> [2006-02-01 23:45]:
> > referrer, which aggregator presumably[1] never do, then serve
> > as `application/xml` [snip]
>
>Does this work for bookmarks?  (Thinking here especially of IE
>bookmarks saved to a desktop and double-clicked to start the
>browser...)

Hmm, that’s a catch. Probably not…

Regards,

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 01:59:12 +0100

> different popular aggregators.

Cunning, but the result of presuming aggregators "never do" might mean
aggregators never can, and referrer refs. from aggregators may well be
useful.

Cheers,
Danny.

--

http://dannyayers.com

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From: Eric Scheid <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:12:57 +1100

On 2/2/06 12:51 PM, "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Then again, I can¹t think of interesting
> information to put in the referrer of regular feed poll requests,
> but maybe my imagination is just too limited here.

Who said the aggregator would be limited to only doing regular feed polls?

My aggregator of choice lets me browse the links in entries, including any
atom:links ... no reason it couldn't thus fetch a linked resource, and
specify the current feed as the referrer.

e.

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From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 04:03:27 +0100

* Eric Scheid <[email-masked]> [2006-02-02 03:20]:
>My aggregator of choice lets me browse the links in entries,
>including any atom:links ... no reason it couldn't thus fetch a
>linked resource, and specify the current feed as the referrer.

How many of those point to Atom feed documents instead of
elsewhere on the web?

What harm would it do if these were served to your aggregator as
`application/xml`?

Regards,

---

From: "A. Pagaltzis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 02:51:54 +0100

* Danny Ayers <[email-masked]> [2006-02-02 02:10]:
>Cunning, but the result of presuming aggregators "never do"
>might mean aggregators never can, and referrer refs. from
>aggregators may well be useful.

Well, an aggregator sending a referrer would receive the feed as
`application/xml` – it’s not like it wouldn’t work, just
suboptimally so. Then again, I can’t think of interesting
information to put in the referrer of regular feed poll requests,
but maybe my imagination is just too limited here.

(I do live under the pleasant illusion that this hackery-pokery
is a stopgap measure that will only be necessary for a relatively
short while until feeds are ubiquitous and the user-side
infrastructure all Just Works. Presumably then we will no longer
need to worry about what to do about users seeing raw XML and
aggregators will be able to send referrers peacefully…)

Regards,