Here is the relevant draft spec: <http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest2/#the-followredirects-attribute> This related to Chromium 80258 <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=80258>
<rdar://problem/9359027>
XHR being frozen and followRedirects being removed from all up-to-date XHR specs (W3C, WHATWG), it does not make real sense anymore to implement this feature. If there is no objection, I will close this bug as WONTFIX.