Talk:Get timestamp-of-file from web-server

Why is it that

when downloading a file over the (world wide) web,

web browsers do not offer (as a feature)

the ability to preserve (or inherit) the last-modified timestamp of the file that is being downloaded.

Usually, what you get, instead, is a timestamp that simply indicates when the file was downloaded. What use is that? - Fleetwoodta (talk) 21:52, June 24, 2014 (UTC)

Why is it not the default beahvior (requiring no knowledge or configuration tweaking by end-user (or SysOp or Admin, for that matter) of the software that is usually used to browse the web and access and (particularly, download) web resources (files stored on web servers) (particularly GUI web browsers (web user agents / apps) like Firefox Chrome and Internet Explorer and Safari

why is it not their default behavior to (when possible) (when allowed by the web server) retain the last-modified timestamp of the file on the web server (when saving a copy locally)? (After all, the local filesystem likely has other timestamp fields like the last access ed and maybe birth (a.k.a creation) time and/or last-changeed time which records when the download completed (and maybe started/commenced).

The only HTTP (world wide web) user agent for which this is default behavior is wget. —This unsigned comment was added by Fleetwoodta (talk • contribs). Please remember to sign your posts on a talk page using ~.

Firefox do not set HTTP timestamp to file metadata
It is not true that Firefox set HTTP timestamp to file metadata (be it creation time or modify time). Current Firefox versions always set current time.