[whatwg] Inconsistent behavior for empty-string URLs

Fri Dec 18 02:25:01 PST 2009

On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:51:44 +0100, Simon Pieters <simonp at opera.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:58:03 +0100, Simon Pieters <simonp at opera.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> I asked Philip to provide some data about pages using empty attributes  
>> for these:
>>
>> <Philip`> zcorpan: http://philip.html5.org/data/empty-url-attributes.txt
>> <Philip`> zcorpan:  
>> http://philip.html5.org/data/empty-url-link-attributes.txt
>>
>>
>> I have not looked at these yet,
>
> (and still haven't, just made the data slightly more digestible)

I've now looked at a selection of random URLs.

Conclusion: None of these seem to need a request to be made. img should  
fire an error event. iframe and frame should use about:blank.

>> but it would probably be good to do so before changing things, so we  
>> have an idea what the compat impact is.
>
> http://simon.html5.org/dump/empty-url-attributes.xml
>
> <img src>, 3221 occurrences

Some pages use these as spacers.

http://10-0-1-1.category.datapicks.com/.html has:

<img alt="!  Advanced Applet Suite"  
onerror="this.src='http://www.datapicks.com/icon.gif';" src=""  
align="left" border="0" vspace="3" hspace="5" width="32" height="32">

...which suggests that we need to fire an error event (the page works as  
intended in Chrome and but has broken image boxes in Opera and Firefox).

Similarly  
http://dailysofts.com/program/366/5247/MacDrive_6_for_Windows.html has:

<img alt="Stamp It" onerror="this.src='/icon.gif';" src="" align="left"  
border="0" height="32" width="32">

http://album.cando360.com/photo/personal_2453.html has:

<img src=""  id="GlobalUserLogined_MyHeaderImg" />

...which seems like something that is filled in when the user is logged  
in, maybe with script.

Similarly  
http://managedhealthcareexecutive.modernmedicine.com/mhe/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=367917&sk=&date=&%0A%09%09%09&pageID=2  
has:

<img id="randomImage" src="" alt="Word Verification Image Loading, please  
wait..."/>

> <script src>, 248 occurrences

These seem to be mostly not-filled-in boiletplate.

> <iframe src>, 1862 occurrences

These seem to just want to get an about:blank iframe for various reasons.

> <video src>, 0 occurrences
> <video poster>, 0 occurrences
> <audio src>, 0 occurrences
> <object data>, 0 occurrences
> <embed src>, 74 occurrences

These seem to be not-filled-in object/embed plugin boilerplates. Not sure  
if they need to invoke the plugin (from type or other) or not.

> <source src>, 0 occurrences
> <input src>, 55 occurrences

Not sure what to make of these. Some are not type=image, some seem to be  
invisible submit buttons...

> <command icon>, 0 occurrences
> <html manifest>, 0 occurrences
> <applet code>, 0 occurrences
> <frame src>, 53 occurrences

Mostly a blank main frame getting filled in with script or by clicking a  
link in another frame.

> <body background>, 1665 occurrences

Pages with no background image...

> http://simon.html5.org/dump/empty-url-link-attributes.xml
>
> <link rel=icon>, 243 occurrences

Not-filled-in boilerplate.

> <link rel=prefetch>, 0 occurrences
> <link rel=stylesheet>, 115 occurrences

Not-filled-in boilerplate.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software