rest/webforms

Forms Browser Support

For reasons of (apparently) sheer inertia, HTML4 did not require browsers to support HTTP verbs 'PUT' and 'DELETE' in forms. This is arguably a horrible oversight, and certainly a sticking point for REST-in-a-browser.

Problem

HTML UAs only support two verbs, POST and GET, per HTML4 spec.

The new WebForms 2.0 spec extends it and allows using multiple verbs:

http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#for-http

This spec is not part of W3C work, although W3C acknowledged it:

http://www.w3.org/Submission/2005/02/Comment

Proposal

We propose to work with Firefox and Safari to get them to section 5.6.1 of Web Forms 2.0 (which hopefully will push IE to do so as well). While that will not solve the legacy problem, it will at least allow developers to write to this paradigm, even if they have to fake it in some cases for backwards compatibility.

Solutions

Compatible versions

• Opera

Bugs & Patches

• Firefox ?
• Safari ?
• Internet Explorer ?

Workarounds

AFAIK, there are no plans to implement Web Forms 2.0 in MSIE natively, but there is an effort to provide a JS-powered implementation:

http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2005/05/wf2-ie/

Other Relevant WebForms Enhancements

2.4 Extensions to the input element

http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#extensions

2.5. Extensions to existing attributes

http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#extensions0

> and allow to specify the allowed content-type for file upload, and so on.

2.15. Extensions to file upload controls

http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#upload

5.6.1. For http actions

http://whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/current-work/#for-http