[vlovich123]

I don't know. There's a lot of problems but to me "at least" sounds like a more helpful phrasing. Browsers run in such heterogeneous compute environments (even back then) that "up to" basically cripples you to the lowest common denominator of all platforms you target. "At least" makes it mostly the HW vendors problem. Sure, MS was encountering this problem more because Windows ran on such a large range of HW but think about what the world would look like today if you had browser vendors putting caps for desktop browsers based on what mobile could support.

EDIT: For some limits. For other limits "up to" wording may be more appropriate & is still in use (e.g. storage).

[simias]

"At least" seems like a very good way of introducing a DoS vector.

I think that 1024 was probably too short as a limit, but I think that it does make sense to impose an arbitrary upper bound to reject malformed requests early.

I don't see what you mean by "the HW vendor's problem", I can assure you that any browser in existence is going to have an issue if you send a 1TB URL, while the NIC will have no issue transmitting it.

[lurkerasdfh8]

You are correct, but microsoft must https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

[marcosdumay]

And here's the answer to the sibling asking why it's a problem, since they mean exactly the same on practice :)

What it literally means and what people understand when reading it aren't the same thing. On this case, for people creating sites, "up to" leads immediately into the real meaning of the phrase, while "at least" strongly implies the opposite. But for people creating browsers, the implication is inverted.

[wccrawford]

The URL can be up to 1024 characters. The browser must support at least 1024 character URLs.

They're 2 sides of the same coin, but MS didn't actually rephrase the sentence properly. Their version would have every URL have at least 1024 characters in it. Any less than that, and the browser should reject the URL as invalid.

[lurkerasdfh8]

> Any less than that, and the browser should reject the URL as invalid.

lol. that would have been awesome. domain squatters would be running for the 1000 character names while crying about all the money they paid for three letters one :)

[jfrunyon]

It's a lot more likely that the commenter remembering something he read 28(!) years later didn't rephrase it properly.

[eevilspock]

Originalism vs strict constructionism vs loose constructionism.