(no subject)

[pne]

"And there's another HTTP header 'Refresh: 5; http://www.example.com/'"

That's not a standard, though, is it?

Yes, it's part of the HTTP standard.

Well, it's not in my reading of HTTP/1.1...

OTOH, I'm probably more anal about this than strictly necessary. Due, no doubt, to hanging around ciwah too long [see, for example, Alan Flavell passim] and hearing from people who like to say what's standard and what isn't. Still, it bugs me a little. It's like saying <marquee> is standard HTML or something, or that &#151; is the entity for an em dash.

Update: Class found out that browsers react differently to this header (supporting it or not). The trainer reaffirmed that it's a standard header ("after all, it was the only way to redirect someone after a while without using JavaScript") and another participant said, "see SelfHTML; it's documented to be part of the standard". Grr. SelfHTML is not a standard, and anyway, it documents (mostly) HTML, not HTTP. And we're not talking about <meta http-equiv="refresh"> (which would imply a corresponding HTTP header, we're talking about the HTTP header itself. And the "HTML 2.0, XHTML 1.0" refers to the meta tag per se, not necessarily the possible attribute values, I'd say.

Read my lips, people: THE REFRESH: HEADER IS NOT STANDARD HTTP. No matter how hard you say so.

Update 2: "It's in the big book [Java Servlet Programming] on page 145, and in the O'Reilly HTTP Pocket Reference. It doesn't explicitly talk about standards compliance, but I don't think that completely proprietary things would be in there." And indeed... the ORA book on servlets says, "Client-Pull-Informationen werden mit Hilfe des HTTP-Headers Refresh an den Client gesendet." ("Client pull information is sent to the client by means of the HTTP Refresh header."). Ptui! Bad ORA editor! Letting nonstandard stuff through without saying a word about it!

Update 3: It's not in Clinton Wong's HTTP Pocket Reference, thank goodness.

Final update: I should probably stop now until I'm rational again; I'm getting too worked up about things. *fx:bites tongue*

Comments

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with being anal about standards! I've spent all year being taught by a guy who is unable to say "HTML" without sticking an X on the front. Despite furious protests that things like <br> is HTML and not XHTML, he refuses to listen. Thankfully, we have been able to persuade him to view our assignments in Mozilla rather than Netscape 4.7, as such an old version of Netscape doesn't properly support CSS.