Re: XmlHttpRequest not loading latest version of xml

Randy Webb wrote:

> Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn said the following on 11/28/2005 7:01 PM:
>> Randy Webb wrote:
>>> Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn said the following on 11/28/2005 9:50 AM:
>>>> Matt Kruse wrote:
>>>>> Except in very specific situations, sending a unique url is still the
>>>>> best and most consistent option.
>>>> No, it is not.
>>> Yes it is. It is reliable and dependable.
>> Perhaps. Which does not make it a Good Thing since there is a
>> far better alternative, which is also reliable, is available.
>
> Only if that alternative is available to the author and it is not always
> available. If a person is using a free web server (many people do) then
> they may not (and most times dont) have access to set headers. That
> leaves them with the only alternative of the queryString to get the
> updated resource.

As was said before, service providers that do not allow their customers
to set HTTP headers, should be forced by them to do so and if they do not
comply they should be abandoned and disadvised to other people in favor of
those many other (free) providers that do. That follows alone from being
able to correctly declare the character encoding of the served resource in
the Content-Type header, which is required since no character encoding can
be assumed by HTML UAs (see the Spec). On the other hand, people who serve
resources with the wrong or no character encoding declaration in the HTTP
headers and let the UA make an educated guess instead [which fails e.g.
for IE which assumes UTF-7(!) as default] do not deserve to be called
Web authors or even Web programmers or webmasters.

PointedEars
Received on Sat Dec 3 04:33:49 2005