Re: bug, or "feature"?

Daniel LaLiberte (liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Sat, 30 Dec 95 01:24:03 CST

Larry Masinter writes:
> > I've just discovered that with some popular browsers, including the
> > latest from Netscape, if you do a GET on a URL with a fragment (an
> > anchor, a "#something" on the end), and the server issues a redirect
> > (302) so that a different document is fetched, then the browser will
> > NOT seek to the anchor to the ultimately viewed document -- you end up
> > staring at the beginning of the page.
>
> I think it's a bug. I suppose this should be clarified in the next
> revision of the URL documents.

I guess I agree. The client has no way to tell the server what the
fragment is (maybe that's the underlying problem here) so that the
redirect could include an equivalent fragment, if appropriate.

This is somewhat analogous to the question about a redirect from a
POST request - should the client assume the new request should use
method POST? Current clients use GET, and code (such as HyperNews)
depends on that behavior. I believe what is missing is a way for the
server to identify the full request, rather than just the URL, that
the client should use.

Daniel LaLiberte (liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~liberte/