[thelist] The case of the missing referrer :)

[Chris]

I always thought that the Referer (page A) was the page the user used to get
to the next page (page B) via a link, in so much as to say that they were
Refered by page A to page B.

To me it does make sense that the referer would also give away the page the
user was just looking at when they decided to go somewhere else by using a
bookmark/favorite or just typing in the URL manually. It only makes sense
when the user clicks a link or uses some other control coded in to the page
to get to page B.

Regards,
Chris





-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of
David.Cantrell at Gunter.AF.mil
Sent: Wednesday, 28 August 2002 23:53
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: RE: [thelist] The case of the missing referrer :)


>But that *isn't* the way it's supposed to work, no?

AFAIK (don't quote me though) this *is* how it's supposed to work. It's just
spec'd improperly, or maybe not spec'd at all.

I played with headers, etc years ago when I was first learning HTML/HTTP
(using telnet really clears things up for you) and what happens is the
browser simply stores the current URL and passes that in the header of all
requests. At least IE/Win works that way, not sure if other browsers exhibit
the same behavior.

Like I said, it's either not spec'd and left to the browser implementation,
or spec'd "wrong". Though it may be "wrong" on purpose, for a reason I'm not
aware of. ;)

-dave
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