WWW Form Bug Report: "content negotiation that works with Netscape" on NeXT (fwd)

[Rob Hartill <ro...@imdb.com>]

not acked.


Message-Id: <19...@taz.hyperreal.com>
From: bbum@friday.com
To: apache-bugs%apache.org@organic.com
Date: Fri May 17 14:16:33 1996
Subject: WWW Form Bug Report: "content negotiation that works with Netscape" on NeXT

Submitter: bbum@friday.com
Operating system: NeXT, version: 
Version of Apache Used: any
Extra Modules used: html3_check
URL exhibiting problem: 

Symptoms:
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Not a bug, per se, just a lack of a feature.

I created a module that performs a sort of content negotiation dependent upon the User-Agent: value provided by the client.  The specific motivation was that Netscape (among others) decided to send ONLY Accepts: */* -- with no indication of preference betwen HTML-3 or HTML2.  Likewise, other browsers exhibit similar problems.

So, in the interests of simplifying our web production staff's life, I created a simple module that checks to see if a Mozilla-type browser is on the other end (it's actually a configurable table);  if it is, it checks to see if the URL is of a certain content type (actually, it checks the file's extension;  but checking content-type is equally as trivial)-- if it is, it checks to see if there is an alternative type that is more preferable... ie; if the client asked for something, the client is a Mozilla browser, and something.html3 is available (and, of course, content negotiation is enabled), something.html3 will be returned (instead of something.html).

This has completely obviated the need to provide CGI-based or SSI-based solutions for dealing with the various 'features' of the myriad of browser in use on the Inet.

b.bum
--

Backtrace:
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----- End of forwarded message from bbum@friday.com -----

-- 
Rob Hartill (robh@imdb.com)
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb)  http://www.imdb.com/
           ...more movie info than you can poke a stick at.