[whatwg] Style sheet loading and parsing (over HTTP)

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 10:02 +0200 UTC, on 2007-05-23, Anne van Kesteren wrote:

> On Wed, 23 May 2007 04:05:26 +0200, Sander Tekelenburg <st at isoc.nl> wrote:
>> [...] At 10:44 +0200 UTC, on 2007-05-22, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>
>>> For compatibility with the web it seems important to simply ignore
>>> Content-Type in all modes.
>>
>> I'm confused about "in all modes" in this context. I thouht the idea was
>> to do away with modes altogether?
>
> Standards and quirks mode I meant.

But I thought the idea was that there is to be one HTML, with such
well-defined error handling for UAs that there will be no more modes except
The One Mode.

> [...] Because we implemented
> something that did completely respect it in standards mode we break
> sites... Go figure.

Well, that's web publishers breaking their own sites. But I understand what
you mean, in that a group of end users will blame the UA.

Still, I'm not sure what the current situation is. An old, simple test case
of mine, at <http://santek.no-ip.org/~st/tests/contenttype/>, shows that now
in fact more UAs respect that Content-Type header's MIME type than when I
originally put it up. (WebKit now does respect that Content-Type.) That gives
me the impression that most UAs that are not IE do respect the Content-Type's
mime type, and makes me wonder what the problem really is.

Maybe that test case doesn't reflect the reality that some people here are
talking about?

[...Content-Type in general...]

> This was about loading style sheet resources. User agents know when
> they're doing that. The same goes for loading image resources (from <img>
> or background-image).

Hm... right. OK, it might indeed be that when CSS is linked to through the
link element, or @import, it may be safe to ignore the Content-Type header's
MIME type. Ignoring the HTTP status would seem to be another thing though. I
mean, surely something like a 301 or 307 would have to be respected.

But Ian seems to be talking about Content-Type in general, not just for Style
Sheets.

So I'm trying to understand exactly what is being proposed here. To do away
with Content-Type exactly where? To ignore Content-Type entirely (in specific
situations), or to ignore it only when its value makes no sense, and if so,
what's the definition of "sense"?


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>