[whatwg] Inconsistent behavior for empty-string URLs

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
> For example not all <link>s are automatically downloaded, such as
> <link rel=prev>. However I suspect that we'll want all <link>s to
> behave the same.

I'd say the rule should be that if the type is text/html or unknown,
"" should work.  If it's known to be some other type, like text/css,
then it should fail.  Alternatively, it should work for everything
that doesn't actually fetch a resource automatically.  After all, the
rationale for this whole change is that "" as a source for images and
such 1) makes no sense and is almost certainly an authoring mistake,
and 2) causes extra HTTP requests -- but neither is true for all
<link>s.  For instance, <link rel=first href=""> makes perfect sense
and causes no extra requests, so I don't think it should be
prohibited.