alt Hacker News> The difference between HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1 is exactly like the difference between plugging your PC in with a green cable or a red cable. The client neither knows nor cares.
Just like protocol negotiation, HTTP has format negotiation and XML postprocessing for exactly the same reason.
> So what do I put as the URL of an MP3 and an Ogg of the same song? It's the same content, just supplied in a different format
Whatever you want? If I access example.org/example.png, most websites will return a webp or avif instead if my browser supports it.
Similarly, it makes sense to return an XML with XSLT for most browsers and a degraded experience with just a simple text file for legacy browsers such as NCSA Mosaic or 2027's Google Chrome.
> Whatever you want? If I access example.org/example.png, most websites will return a webp or avif instead if my browser supports it.
So, you need a lot of cleverness on the browser to detect which format the client needs, and return the correct thing?
Kind of not the same situation as emitting an XML file and a chunk of XSLT with it, really.
If you're going to make the server clever, why not just make the server clever enough to return either an RSS feed or an HTML page depending on what it guesses the client wants?