[ale] Data encoding in a web page

[J.M. Taylor]

Chris,

As to how Netscape knows to do it, it's built into the http protocol, see
w3.org.  Post vars get sent exactly like Get/Put vars (ie, URL encoded,
ie, with special chars converted to their ascii equivs).

Browsers must send data this way.  As to what's the difference, my only
real guess would be that certain special chars are reserved by the browser
(ie: ? = and & ) and so it's better to urlencode so that the browser
doesn't get erroneous data.  Also, when they send data from a textarea
they have to encode the newlines or the data wouldn't all come in on that
absurdly long string.

Thankfully, this is one area that MS has decided to play by the rules.

Speaking of the absurdly long string and textareas, does anybody know how
much data can be passed via POST (not individual fields, but the whole
entire form as a single entity)?  I looked everywhere, w3 doesn't have it
as part of the http specification but surely there's an upper limit to how
much data can be passed...

Ciao
jenn