Suggestions for improving Webber

From	D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.apple2
Subject	Suggestions for improving Webber
Date	2021-10-04 06:17 +0000
Organization	Mac GUI
Message-ID	<dog_cow-1633328221@macgui.com> (permalink)

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I spent a few hours earlier today using Webber and I'm really impressed with
how it performs in many areas, including HTML rendering. Here are many
suggestions for improvements that occurred to me while I used version 1.1.1
of the application:


Suggest you show the user the text of a page even if the server response
code is 404. These 404 response pages may still contain useful information
for the user, such as a new location, or a directory of related pages, etc.

Same with 503 and other 5xx errors. Show the response text, not an alert.
Users want a web browser that acts like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.

I notice that you issue a DNS query before the HEAD request and again before
the GET request. Why not save the response of the first query, and omit the
second?

Suggest you show DNS lookup errors in the browser window like other
mainstream browsers (Firefox, etc.) and not as a beeping alert.

Fails to load the URL http://a/ telling me it's a bad path. It's a perfectly
valid path on my system, and my DNS server answers to the name 'a',
providing a valid A record which corresponds to a web server.

Does not omit ../ or /. from the URL path component, and instead presents
them to the server as part of the HEAD or GET request. According to RFC, the
user agent is supposed to remove these.

Does not automatically follow 302 redirects which is typical browser
convention.

Does not recognize 303 response code (RFC 2616, 10.3.4), nor codes 304 or
307. I suggest handling 303 and 307 the same as 302 Found. A 304 response I
think should be handled by checking if the page is in Webber's cache, and if
so, reading it from there.

Will follow a 3xx redirect chain ad-infinitum. Suggest adding a limit of 10
redirects. Perhaps show a dialog asking the user if he wants to continue
following the redirects or cancel.

Does Webber ever send If-Modified-Since header field in GET request?

Webber will frequently crash into the monitor, but leaving the SHR screen
showing, after a bad connection or DNS resolution error dialog.

Add Bookmark dialog: "Not a URL it must start..." dialog will come up
repeatedly after clicking OK when URL begins with first few characters of
"http://" protocol. No way to escape. To reproduce this, first leave the
Name field empty, and enter a bogus URL, such as the single character ";".
Press Return. Speaker starts beeping. Now type something in the name field
and click Save button.

Dialog doesn't come up if the URL begins with "http:/foo/" but the speaker
beeps.

Add Bookmark: enter just "http:" as the URL and press Return, the speaker
will beep ceaselessly. No dialog. Beeping stops if you click Cancel. This
also happens if both fields are empty and you press Return.

Editing an existing bookmark: this check for http:// or file:// does not
occur. No dialog.

Pressing Return key in Edit Bookmarks dialog does not trigger the default
Save button. Remove Colour menu item in Edit menu is not dimmed.

When View Page Source dialog is open, Remove Colour menu item in Edit menu
is not dimmed.

HTML parser: <div> tags are showing as "div" text in the browser window in
some instances. I can give you HTML to reproduce this; email me for it.

Text/plain documents trigger a Save As dialog. Suggest you show text/plain
in the browser window, with Save As command in File menu.

Save as dialog: encoded %20 in file name is not converted to a space.
Suggest you decode % entities in file names.

-- 
]DF$
The New Apple II User's Guide:
https://macgui.com/newa2guide/

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Thread

Suggestions for improving Webber D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2021-10-04 06:17 +0000
  Re: Suggestions for improving Webber Speccie <someone@somewhere.com> - 2021-10-04 08:23 +0100
    Re: Suggestions for improving Webber D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2021-10-04 23:52 +0000
      Re: Suggestions for improving Webber Speccie <someone@somewhere.com> - 2021-10-05 07:39 +0100
        Re: Suggestions for improving Webber D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2021-10-06 03:16 +0000

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