Accessing CVS-WEB?

[David Brodbeck]

NCSA Mosaic had support for gzip encoding years ago, if I remember
correctly.  It's a nice way to save bandwidth and I'm glad to see that other
browsers have finally come around to supporting it!  "Traditional"
restrictions have a nasty way of fostering inefficiency.  (Witness how long
it's taking for anyone to switch from GIF to PNG, for example.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher R. Hertel [mailto:crh at nts.umn.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 1:41 PM
To: Andrew Bartlett
Cc: John E. Malmberg; samba-technical at samba.org
Subject: Re: Accessing CVS-WEB?


Andrew Bartlett wrote:
:
> Its the gzip encoding.  The files are gzip encoded to save bandwidth
> (becouse they are both large and compress well), and your older browser
> doesn't understand it.  Upgrade your browser.

Um...

Can you show me where in the W3C specs it says that gzip encoding is part
of the standard?  It may be there, as the W3C validator can read the page
(though it does cough up an error message...missing ALT tag). 

If it's part of the standard then upgrading the browser is, unfortunately,
the correct answer (and you can skip the rest of this message). 

If not, then requiring gzip is no better than letting Microsoft generate
unfriendly Javascript web pages and expect users to "upgrade" to Internet
Explorer with all the dummy switches turned on just to see the content. 

Sorry, but the "your browser isn't good enough for our web page" thing
gets on my nerves.  I'm annoyed by Microsoft's successful takeover of the
web and I don't want to be guilty of the same bad behavior that got them
there. 

Chris -)-----

-- 
Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services

    Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them
    with your hands...you choose them as your guides, and following
    them you will reach your destiny.  --Carl Schultz