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WebKit's positions on emerging web specifications
https://webkit.org/standards-positions/
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Reduce Accept-Language #338

Open Tanych opened 7 months ago

Tanych commented 7 months ago

WebKittens

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Title of the spec

Reduce languages in Accept-Language

URL to the spec

https://github.com/Tanych/accept-language/blob/main/README.md

URL to the spec's repository

https://github.com/Tanych/accept-language

Issue Tracker URL

No response

Explainer URL

https://github.com/Tanych/accept-language/blob/main/README.md

TAG Design Review URL

No response

Mozilla standards-positions issue URL

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1014

WebKit Bugzilla URL

No response

Radar URL

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Description

Most browsers send all of the user's language preferences on every HTTP request via the Accept-Language header. The header's value contains a lot of entropy about the user that is sent to servers by default. Reduce Accept-Language intends to reduce the amount of information the Accept-Language header exposes in HTTP requests and JS interface navigator.languages. Instead of sending all user’s Accept-Language, we only send the user’s most preferred language after language negotiation in the Accept-Language header.

Also, Safari currently only sends single language over the Accept-Language and JS getter navigator.languages.

annevk commented 7 months ago

Could you clarify what you mean with this statement

the user’s most preferred language after language negotiation

? Thanks!

Overall I get the impression you'd be aligning with WebKit on this, but I'd like to make sure I understand correctly.

Tanych commented 7 months ago

basically the server can provide the support language on the HTTP response header, and browser take responsible to find the best language match both server supported language and user accept-language. you can find more details example on https://github.com/Tanych/accept-language/blob/main/README.md#language-negotiation.

miketaylr commented 7 months ago

Aside from that, yes, we would be aligning with WebKit.

annevk commented 6 months ago

Currently as I understand it Safari's networking stack sends up to two languages (two when the user's preferred language from the system's language, otherwise just one).

It seems in your proposal you introduce a cost for the website to obtain the second language, which seems like a nice property, but it comes with the drawback that it won't work on any existing website.

It's not entirely clear why that is the correct trade-off given that the additional language will be exposed to an active attacker and comes with a worse experience on existing websites.