4 ms·

Link header seemed very exotic to me. I was very surprised to hear that that exists

by azeemba 4y ago

javajosh 4y ago
Same. And honestly its existence concerns me greatly, non-ironically.
- afandian 4y ago
  Curious, what’s concerning? Links à la IETF RFC 5988 are pretty vanilla web stuff.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    There is nothing worse than believing something that isn't true. Imagine trouble-shooting a front-end issue, and not knowing about this. You think you know where all the CSS is coming from, and that it couldn't possibly produce the effect you're seeing. But actually you do not know where all the CSS is coming from. Adding subresources via http header is pure evil.
    - afandian 4y ago
      Seems like there’s a multitude of similar situations to deal with with modern front development. This would hardly be more “evil” than anything else.
      - javajosh 4y ago
        Well, then I don't think I respect your opinion. It's true that tab state is, in general, a function over a truly vast array of variables, plus transitives. But there are some invariants that have been present in the browser from the beginning which constrain this diversity. This feature removes a foundational invariant, namely that the content (and style) of a page depends on the content of a resource. This is a profound mistake that is not in the same league as, for example, a misconfigured webpack. It is more akin to an intrusive, badly written browser extension that injects random crap into a page, but this is far worse because of its novelty, and because of its (potential) scale. This feature needs to die.
        svieira 4y ago
        The fact of the matter is that what-a-resource-is includes the headers it is served with and the context in which it is requested. Consider https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/squirrel/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/squirrel/ It may not be normal in your day-to-day work, but it's definitely an important point of extensibility. Extensibility is indeed opposed to management (see _The Principle of Least Power_ for more on that front) but that is a trade off that worked really well for the web for decades. I for one would be really sad to see this further limited and would love for browser support for `Link` header behavior to increase rather than decrease.
        javajosh 4y ago
        By that reasoning content-length should include headers. Needless to say you have not changed my mind. There's never going to be a hard and fast rule distinguishing headers from content. It's all just data after all. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to eliminate the distinction entirely. It's almost as if software engineers are doomed to this pendulum of constraining and then under constraining. It happened with SQL and noSQL and it seems to be happening now with HTTP. Constraints are for your own benefit but maybe it takes time to really grok that.
        afandian 4y ago
        At a cursory search, Link appears in 1996. It was there before CSS. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945#appendix-D.2.6 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945#appendix-D.2.6
        javajosh 4y ago
        Wow, you're right! Good that it was summarily ignored until now I guess.
        afandian 4y ago
        I fear we’re getting into xkcd 386 but… As svieira says above, Link is a standard thing. It’s widely used. CSS is even based on it. Another example is ‘canonical’. https://http.dev/link#canonical https://http.dev/link#canonical You may not have encountered it personally, but I don’t think it’s wise to extrapolate from that.

Link header seemed very exotic to me. I was very surprised to hear that that exists

javajosh 4y ago

Same. And honestly its existence concerns me greatly, non-ironically.

afandian 4y ago
Curious, what’s concerning? Links à la IETF RFC 5988 are pretty vanilla web stuff.
- javajosh 4y ago
  There is nothing worse than believing something that isn't true. Imagine trouble-shooting a front-end issue, and not knowing about this. You think you know where all the CSS is coming from, and that it couldn't possibly produce the effect you're seeing. But actually you do not know where all the CSS is coming from. Adding subresources via http header is pure evil.
  - afandian 4y ago
    Seems like there’s a multitude of similar situations to deal with with modern front development. This would hardly be more “evil” than anything else.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      Well, then I don't think I respect your opinion. It's true that tab state is, in general, a function over a truly vast array of variables, plus transitives. But there are some invariants that have been present in the browser from the beginning which constrain this diversity. This feature removes a foundational invariant, namely that the content (and style) of a page depends on the content of a resource. This is a profound mistake that is not in the same league as, for example, a misconfigured webpack. It is more akin to an intrusive, badly written browser extension that injects random crap into a page, but this is far worse because of its novelty, and because of its (potential) scale. This feature needs to die.
      - svieira 4y ago
        The fact of the matter is that what-a-resource-is includes the headers it is served with and the context in which it is requested. Consider https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/squirrel/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/squirrel/ It may not be normal in your day-to-day work, but it's definitely an important point of extensibility. Extensibility is indeed opposed to management (see _The Principle of Least Power_ for more on that front) but that is a trade off that worked really well for the web for decades. I for one would be really sad to see this further limited and would love for browser support for `Link` header behavior to increase rather than decrease.
        javajosh 4y ago
        By that reasoning content-length should include headers. Needless to say you have not changed my mind. There's never going to be a hard and fast rule distinguishing headers from content. It's all just data after all. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to eliminate the distinction entirely. It's almost as if software engineers are doomed to this pendulum of constraining and then under constraining. It happened with SQL and noSQL and it seems to be happening now with HTTP. Constraints are for your own benefit but maybe it takes time to really grok that.
        afandian 4y ago
        At a cursory search, Link appears in 1996. It was there before CSS. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945#appendix-D.2.6 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945#appendix-D.2.6
        javajosh 4y ago
        Wow, you're right! Good that it was summarily ignored until now I guess.
        afandian 4y ago
        I fear we’re getting into xkcd 386 but… As svieira says above, Link is a standard thing. It’s widely used. CSS is even based on it. Another example is ‘canonical’. https://http.dev/link#canonical https://http.dev/link#canonical You may not have encountered it personally, but I don’t think it’s wise to extrapolate from that.