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Redirect without browser interaction

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From: julian.rickards@ndm.gov.on.ca
Date: Mar 9, 2004 8:19AM

Hi:

This is a question that may require someone with ASP or PHP experience and
also HTTP knowledge.

Regarding WCAG Checkpoint 7.5 "Until user agents provide the ability to stop
auto-redirect, do not use markup to redirect pages automatically. Instead,
configure the server to perform redirects."

We, at work, have our default pages named default_e.asp because at the
Ontario (Canada) government, both English and French are official languages
and our web master has decided that English pages end in _e.asp and French
_f.asp. Because the Web server is configured to use default.asp as the
default page (don't bother suggesting that we change it - another department
of the government has a titanium/cobalt-enhanced grip on the servers), our
web master created for us the file called default.asp which contains only <%
Response.redirect "default_e.asp" %>. He did this because of 7.5 above but I
just learned that Response.redirect sends HTTP 302 (temporary move) code to
the browser which then requests the identified file/page. My question is:
does the browser's response to HTTP 302 code contravene checkpoint 7.5 or is
7.5 specifically refering to (pardon any syntax errors) <meta
http-equiv="refresh" content="url: time in seconds">. I was also informed
that PHP's equivalent header("Location: index.php") also sends the 302 code.

Thanks,

Jules

---------------------------------------------------------
Julian Rickards
Digital Publications Distribution Coordinator
Publications Services Section
Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines
Phone: (705) 670-5608
Fax: (705) 670-5690


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