Re: new html extension proposal

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Mon, 21 Aug 95 14:48:44 EDT


Resent-Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 13:25:06 -0400
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 95 12:24:16 -0500

> In this case, ABC-enabled browsers would read the entire IMG tag and
> use /images/daytona.abc instead of /images/daytona.gif. Old-style
> browsers, who know nothing of X-ALTSRC, would use /images/daytona.gif.
> This format is called "dual encoding.

The functionality described in this X-ALTSRC tag would be very similiar to
the Content Negotiation currently in HTTP. I would be against this HTML
addition if only for the sole reason it would slow down awareness and use of
the existing content negotiation capabilities of HTTP.

What's more, this is one of the few instances where content
negotiation could actually work, even given the incredibly anemic set
of Accept: headers which are sent by Netscape (it names the inline
image formats it will accept, and nothing else except for a catch-all
*/*).

rst