Tags: https

I’ve been thinking about some of the default behaviours that are built into web browsers.

First off, there’s the decision that a browser makes if you enter a web address without a protocol. Let’s say you type in example.com without specifying whether you’re looking for http://example.com or https://example.com.

Browsers default to HTTP rather than HTTPS. Given that HTTP is older than HTTPS that makes sense. But given that there’s been such a push for TLS on the web, and the huge increase in sites served over HTTPS, I wonder if it’s time to reconsider that default?

Most websites that are served over HTTPS have an automatic redirect from HTTP to HTTPS (enforced with HSTS). There’s an ever so slight performance hit from that, at least for the very first visit. If, when no protocol is specified, browsers were to attempt to reach the HTTPS port first, we’d get a little bit of a speed improvement.

But would that break any existing behaviour? I don’t know. I guess there would be a bit of a performance hit in the other direction. That is, the browser would try HTTPS first, and when that doesn’t exist, go for HTTP. Sites served only over HTTP would suffer that little bit of lag.

Whatever the default behaviour, some sites are going to pay that performance penalty. Right now it’s being paid by sites that are served over HTTPS.

Here’s another browser default that Rob mentioned recently: the viewport meta tag:

I thought I might be able to get away with omitting meta name="viewport". Apparently not! Maybe someday.

This all goes back to the default behaviour of Mobile Safari when the iPhone was first released. Most sites wouldn’t display correctly if one pixel were treated as one pixel. That’s because most sites were built with the assumption that they would be viewed on monitors rather than phones. Only weirdos like me were building sites without that assumption.

So the default behaviour in Mobile Safari is assume a page width of 1024 pixels, and then shrink that down to fit on the screen …unless the developer over-rides that behaviour with a viewport meta tag. That default behaviour was adopted by other mobile browsers. I think it’s a universal default.

But the web has changed since the iPhone was released in 2007. Responsive design has swept the web. What would happen if mobile browsers were to assume width=device-width?

The viewport meta element always felt like a (proprietary) band-aid rather than a long-term solution—for one thing, it’s the kind of presentational information that belongs in CSS rather than HTML. It would be nice if we could bid it farewell.