> That I do not support web browsers that don't support Brotli should already tell you that I don't care if they support Brotli or not! If there is no support, there is no support! Doesn't effect me.
You had to go out of your way to break support for these browsers. Literally every HTTP package (including Rocket) out of the box handles uncompressed responses. You had to modify it to add always-on Brotli encoding.
> I do not support non-SSL HTTP connections.
Why do you keep repeating this? That's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Nothing about this discussion has anything to do with whether or not the HTTP protocol is wrapped in SSL.
> Naturally. I would prefer to not have anyone using these tools on my server.
So, you want a web site that completely breaks HTTP such that only works with a handful of browsers and doesn't work with the probably tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of other software that speaks HTTP.
> You had to go out of your way to break support for these browsers. Literally every HTTP package (including Rocket) out of the box handles uncompressed files. You had to modify it to add always-on Brotli encoding.
I did not have to go out of my way to 'break support for these browsers'. All I did was replace the gzip-compression code in my page cacher with brotli-compression code. In other words, I went from always-on Gzip encoding to always-on Brotli encoding! I have never supported serving uncompressed files! The web browsers I care about (Firefox, Chrome) support Brotli, and that's all I care about! There is no purposeful breaking of web browsers. That's just persecution complex talk.
> Why do you keep repeating this? That's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Nothing about this discussion has anything to do with whether or not the HTTP protocol is wrapped in SSL.
You're the one that keeps bringing up that the only difference between HTTP and HTTPS is that HTTPS is HTTPS with SSL. I am merely responding to your comment that your comment about them doesn't matter! What does matter is that my website only supports the HTTPS protocol, not HTTP. The web server only listens on port 443 with TLS enabled.
> So, you want a web site that completely breaks HTTP such that only works with a handful of browsers and doesn't work with the probably tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of other software that speaks HTTP.
This is nothing more than pure trolling. All major web browsers support Brotli over HTTPS. Apple's WebKit is the only man out, and they are, at best, a minority on the web. Firefox supports it, Chrome supports it, and Edge supports it. Even if Edge didn't support it, the fact that Firefox and Chrome support it is more than enough for me. Other browsers are just bonuses.
Furthermore, yet again, I do not have a HTTP server, so there is no HTTP here to break! HTTPS is implemented to spec, HSTS headers and all! My website is meant to be viewed by people, not machines. In addition, as the web is moving to being HTTPS-exclusive, it's about time that you start getting used to it. You're wasting your time.
Always-on gzip encoding is also technically broken, it's just far more likely to be supported out of the box by other HTTP clients.
> What does matter is that my website only supports the HTTPS protocol
No, that has literally no bearing on this discussion about your use of Brotli encoding. You're weirdly fixated with this, but it's completely irrelevant.
> This is nothing more than pure trolling.
Do you normally go out of your way to insult people who are trying to have a discussion with you? Because that's what calling someone a troll is.
> All major web browsers support Brotli over HTTPS
Why doesn't Safari count in your eyes as a major browser? Or perhaps more interestingly, why doesn't iOS Safari count? Are you really ok with your site not working for 100% of iOS users?
> In addition, as the web is moving to being HTTPS-exclusive, it's about time that you start getting used to it. You're wasting your time.
Why do I have to keep repeating this? HTTPS has literally nothing to do with this discussion. You keep bringing it up over and over again as if it's somehow meaningful, but all it tells me is that you literally have no idea what you're talking about.
I already explained this in another comment almost an hour ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14346188). Brotli works perfectly fine over HTTP. The only difference between HTTP and HTTPS here is Chrome does not include "br" in the Accept-Encoding header for HTTP. But it will still handle a Content-Encoding of "br" just fine over HTTP.
> One of the major reasons for me moving my website to HTTPS is so that I could use Brotli compression.
Why do you care so much about this particular compression format?
> Otherwise, Firefox and Chrome will merely get a content encoding error page because br is an unknown encoding format when using HTTP!
You clearly did not test this, because Chrome interprets Brotli responses just fine over HTTP. I wager Firefox does too, but I'm not about to install Firefox just to test.
> You're wrong, and Google engineers are right. End of story.
Google engineers are right, but you are not right. You don't understand what the Google engineers are saying. The link you provided specifically has to do with the Accept-Encoding header and not Brotli support as a whole.
> My target audience consists of Linux users using either Chrome or Firefox.
I still don't understand why you're intentionally breaking the open web. It makes no sense.
> No matter how many times I explain things to you, you never seem to get it through your head.
You should try actually listening. You keep explaining things that are factually wrong or completely irrelevant. You seem to not actually understand HTTP, HTTPS, Content-Encodings, or even the idea of the open web in general. And you're going out of your way to break 99% of tools out there for no discernible reason. Why do you love Brotli so much that you're willing to break HTTP just to use it?
The bulk of the responsibility for this ludicrous flamewar is yours. You became increasingly uncivil and spatty in this thread, and proliferated reams of tit-for-tat filler.
This is the sort of argument that gets a few combatants hot and bothered and clogs up the site with tedium for everyone else. We ban accounts that do this, so please make sure it doesn't happen again. HN threads are for good conversation, and there's no worse conversation than this kind of bickering.
> Brotli does not work over HTTP. Period. It doesn't work, and you have yet to prove that it works.
I really do not appreciate you continually calling me a liar (since I've told you in no uncertain terms that I personally have tested this behavior), especially since all you're doing is an appeal to authority ("Google engineers!") based on a misunderstanding of the issue at hand. You keep claiming you have "evidence", but all your "evidence" proves is that you need to work on your reading comprehension skills, because those pages do not say what you think they say.
> You are basically calling Google and each of these authors that I've linked as liars
Let me try this again:
YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS ISSUE. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW CONTENT ENCODINGS WORK OR WHAT EFFECT HTTPS HAS ON BROTLI. I AM NOT CALLING THEM LIARS, I AM CALLING YOU INCREDIBLY IGNORANT.
I am done with this conversation. I am not going to respond to any more of your comments. You don't understand basically any part of what's going on here, but you think you do and you won't even acknowledge the possibility that you are wrong. You're also misinterpreting nearly everything I say, because you're not actually reading my damn comments, you're just skimming them looking for things you can argue against. Case in point, your sentence that starts with "First you said it was 40%"; I was talking about tools that speak HTTP, which was extremely clearly from context, and you're completely misinterpreting that as browsers, and what's more you're even putting words in my mouth (literally nowhere did I say 40%).
That is a serious breach of HN's civility rule and the sort of thing we ban people for. When someone is provocatively repeating wrong statements (or appears to be) and is getting increasingly rude, the way to deal with that is not to lose your own cool, it's to realize that there's no win in this and just leave it.
A.k.a. don't feed the trolls, it takes two to tango, two wrongs don't make a right, and sundry other things our mothers told us.
I've deleted the offending line. But I admit to being a little surprised that "ignorant fool" is considered a serious breach. That honestly seems fairly tame to me. I was looking for a phrase that meant that not only are they ignorant, but they're either unwilling or unable to recognize this. But I suppose I can believe that other people may read more into the phrase that I intended.
You had to go out of your way to break support for these browsers. Literally every HTTP package (including Rocket) out of the box handles uncompressed responses. You had to modify it to add always-on Brotli encoding.
> I do not support non-SSL HTTP connections.
Why do you keep repeating this? That's completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Nothing about this discussion has anything to do with whether or not the HTTP protocol is wrapped in SSL.
> Naturally. I would prefer to not have anyone using these tools on my server.
So, you want a web site that completely breaks HTTP such that only works with a handful of browsers and doesn't work with the probably tens or hundreds of thousands of pieces of other software that speaks HTTP.
Why?