> When you make the connection to the server, it
> automatically spits it out as a 'hello' message. Just have the
> browsers wait for one line of output, then parse it to see if it
> accepts http/1.0 requests, then send the appropriate request. It
> might mean a slight slowdown for sites halfway around the globe, but
> then the connection won't be blazingly fast anyway. :)
> I had always wondered why this wasn't in the HTTP spec, since most
> of the other protocols seem to use it (SMTP, NNTP, POP, etc).
One reason might be that this kind of wart makes it much harder to port
the HTTP protocol to a non-connection-based (say, message-based RPC)
transport layer.
Bill