Re: LYNX-DEV Meta Refresh Tag in Lynx

[David Woolley]

> 
> <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="1; /~siast/default.htm">

> lynx 2.3? If so, has it been corrected in a later version?

I don't believe there is any published requirement for browsers
to implement Refresh (it's certainly not in HTTP 1.1 and most browsers
are still on HTTP 1.0), so you can't actually say that Lynx 2.3 is
at fault, even though current versions are bowing to the de facto standard
established by Netscape and followed by Microsoft.

In any case this looks like an excusable abuse of refresh, but done wrongly.

What I think is being done here is an attempt to simulate a redirect, which
should be done by returning a 30x (302, I think) status and a Location: 
header, but which requires at least the ability to create .asis pages.  Even
then a redirect should include an HTML page with a link to the redirected
location.

However, given commercial constraints may prevent the author from doing
things properly, he should still use a delay of 0, for a faked redirect,
and should use an absolute URL.

I think Netscape invented Refresh as a way of doing simple animations.
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