[whatwg] When closing the browser

Tue Apr 28 07:36:15 PDT 2009

Ian Hickson wrote on 4/27/2009 1:24 PM: 
> One option would be to have an attribute, say <body logout="">, which 
> causes the user agent to ping the site when the window is closed and there 
> are no other windows open to the same origin.
> 
> Of course this would break if the other window in question was open to a 
> different page that didn't have the logout="" attribute..
> 
> Maybe it should be invoked if there are no other pages open that have the 
> same logout="" attribute?
> 
> This has the advantage of not depending on JavaScript, and not affecting 
> the browser's performance (no waiting for sync XHR, etc).
> 
> It would work somewhat like PING does today, though probably using POST.

I like the idea -- thinking out loud here, rather than invoking it when all pages having the same logout="" attribute are closed, can it instead use some other grouping identifier?  That would allow a developer to pass back unique information from each page via the URI.  And I like POST instead of GET.  A same-origin restriction would be good too.  Would the browser accept a response from the logout?  I'm thinking that could be used to immediate end the cookie(s).

- Bil