HTTP Basic Authentication – what’s the expected web browser experience?

When a server allows access via Basic HTTP Authentication, what is the experience expected to be in a web browser?

Ignoring the web browser for a moment, here’s how to create a Basic Auth request with curl:

curl -u myusername:mypassword http://somesite.com

But what about in a Web Browser? What I’ve seen on some websites, is I visit the URL, and then the server returns response code 401. The browser then displays a username/password prompt.

However, on somesite.com, I’m not getting an authorization prompt at all, just a page that says I’m not authorized. Did somesite not implement the Basic Auth workflow correctly, or is there something else I need to do?

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