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On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:07 PM, William Denton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > (Question: Why does HTTPS complicate screen-scraping? Every decent tool > and library supports HTTPS, doesn't it?) > Birkin asked me this same question, and I realized I should clarify what I meant. I was mostly referring to existing screen scrapers/existing web sites. If you redirect every request from http to https, this will probably break things. I think the Open Library example that Karen mentioned is a good case study. And it's pretty different for a library or tool to support HTTPS and a specific app to be expecting it. If you follow the thread around that OL change, it appears there are issues with Java (as one example) arbitrarily consuming HTTPS (from what I understand, you need to have the cert locally?), but I don't know enough about it to say for certain. I think there would also probably be potential issues around mashups (AJAX, for example), but seeing as code4lib.org doesn't support CORS, not really a current issue. Does apply more generally to your question about library websites at large, though. Anyway, I agree with you that the option for both should be there. I'm not just not convinced that HTTPS-all-the-time is necessary for all web use cases. -Ross.