the HTML script tag and non-JS content - Firefox

Question

It appears this code will request the file in Chrome and IE but not in Firefox.

Answer 1

Are you setting the content type. Guessing .NET here so posting basic idea:

public class Handler : IHttpHandler {
    public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {
         context.Response.ContentType = "text/javascript";
         context.Response.Write("alert('hello world');");
    }
}

Answer 2

The canonical way to specify script is

<script src="something.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

or

<script src="somethingThatWilReturnJavaScriptMime.someextension" type="text/javascript"></script>

There is no reason the browser should load unknown mime into a script tag and it will be strictly browser specific whether or not it will allow/ignore the type attribute

It would be a matter of testing to see what the browser will do if you actually send

content-type:text/javascript

regardless of type attribute

Answer 3

Is there a some spec that says browsers should only process JavaScript related mime-types?

See the type attribute:

This attribute gives an advisory hint as to the content type of the content available at the link target address. It allows user agents to opt to use a fallback mechanism rather than fetch the content if they are advised that they will get content in a content type they do not support.

If you want to fetch arbitrary content for use in a script, use XMLHttpRequest.