[thelist] What is the Best Practice for Single Page Redirects?
Jeff Howden
jeff at jeffhowden.com
Thu Jul 10 14:56:40 CDT 2003
ari,
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> From: Aredridel
>
> > <meta http-equiv="REFRESH"
> > content="0;URL=url/goes/here/">
>
> The meta-refresh is good when you want the user to know
> they're being redirected, [...]
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that depends on the timeout you have set. if it's 0, they won't even see
the redirect.
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> It should not be used with a timeout of zero, because it
> makes using the back button on the browser painful.
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that simply isn't true. if there's a timeout of 0, the page with the
redirect is replaced in the browser history with the page being redirected
to. it behaves identically to sending a 302 object moved header from the
server.
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> The redirect method is better for most other things: a
> permanent-redirect code sent to a browser will allow,
> say, a browser, to automatically update bookmarks, [...]
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if there were any browsers on the market that actually implemented that.
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> By the way, the "proper" way to do a refresh is not with
> a meta tag, but the actual HTTP header:
>
> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> Refresh: 5;URL=/foo/bar
> ...
>
> Content goes here
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either way is "proper".
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> Whereas a redirect should look like this:
>
> HTTP/1.1 302 Temporarily Moved
> Location: url-goes-here
> ....
>
> Content goes here
>
> and for a permanent move (as in a page having been moved to a new server
> or location)
>
> HTTP/1.1 301 Permanently Moved
> Location: url-goes-here
> ...
>
> Content here
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be warned that many browsers don't correctly interpret a 301 status code.
even the search engines recommend that you use a 302 if for all redirects.
.jeff
Jeff Howden - Web Application Specialist
Résumé - http://jeffhowden.com/about/resume/
Code Library - http://evolt.jeffhowden.com/jeff/code/
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