diff --git a/Spock.cabal b/Spock.cabal
--- a/Spock.cabal
+++ b/Spock.cabal
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 name:                Spock
-version:             0.7.4.0
+version:             0.7.5.0
 synopsis:            Another Haskell web framework for rapid development
 description:         This toolbox provides everything you need to get a quick start into web hacking with haskell: fast routing, middleware, json, blaze, sessions, cookies, database helper, csrf-protection
 Homepage:            https://github.com/agrafix/Spock
@@ -15,61 +15,69 @@
 
 library
   hs-source-dirs:      src
-  exposed-modules:     Web.Spock.Simple,
-                       Web.Spock.Safe,
-                       Web.Spock.Shared
-  other-modules:       Web.Spock.Internal.SessionManager,
-                       Web.Spock.Internal.Monad,
-                       Web.Spock.Internal.Types,
-                       Web.Spock.Internal.Digestive,
+  exposed-modules:
                        Web.Spock.Internal.Util,
+                       Web.Spock.Safe,
+                       Web.Spock.Shared,
+                       Web.Spock.Simple
+  other-modules:
                        Web.Spock.Internal.Core,
                        Web.Spock.Internal.CoreAction,
+                       Web.Spock.Internal.Digestive,
+                       Web.Spock.Internal.Monad,
+                       Web.Spock.Internal.SessionManager,
+                       Web.Spock.Internal.Types,
                        Web.Spock.Internal.Wire
-  build-depends:       aeson >= 0.6.2.1 && <0.9,
+  build-depends:
+                       aeson >= 0.6.2.1,
                        base >= 4 && < 5,
-                       base64-bytestring ==1.*,
-                       blaze-html ==0.7.*,
-                       bytestring ==0.10.*,
-                       case-insensitive >=1.1 && <1.3,
-                       containers ==0.5.*,
-                       digestive-functors ==0.7.*,
-                       directory ==1.2.*,
-                       hashable ==1.2.*,
-                       http-types ==0.8.*,
-                       monad-control ==0.3.*,
-                       mtl >=2.1 && <2.3,
-                       old-locale ==1.*,
+                       base64-bytestring >=1.0,
+                       blaze-html >=0.7,
+                       bytestring >=0.10,
+                       case-insensitive >=1.1,
+                       containers >=0.5,
+                       digestive-functors >=0.7,
+                       directory >=1.2,
+                       hashable >=1.2,
+                       http-types >=0.8,
+                       monad-control >=0.3,
+                       mtl >=2.1,
+                       old-locale >=1.0,
                        path-pieces >=0.1.4,
-                       random ==1.*,
-                       reroute >=0.2.1 && <0.3,
-                       resource-pool ==0.2.*,
-                       resourcet >= 0.4 && <1.2,
-                       stm ==2.4.*,
-                       text >= 0.11.3.1 && <1.3,
-                       time >=1.4 && <1.6,
-                       transformers >=0.3 && <0.5,
-                       transformers-base ==0.4.*,
-                       unordered-containers ==0.2.*,
-                       vault ==0.3.*,
-                       wai >=3.0 && <4.0,
-                       wai-extra >=3.0 && <4.0,
-                       warp >=3.0 && <4.0
+                       random >=1.0,
+                       reroute >=0.2.1,
+                       resource-pool >=0.2,
+                       resourcet >= 0.4,
+                       stm >=2.4,
+                       text >= 0.11.3.1,
+                       time >=1.4,
+                       transformers >=0.3,
+                       transformers-base >=0.4,
+                       unordered-containers >=0.2,
+                       vault >=0.3,
+                       wai >=3.0,
+                       wai-extra >=3.0,
+                       warp >=3.0
   ghc-options: -Wall -fno-warn-orphans
 
 test-suite spocktests
   type:                exitcode-stdio-1.0
   hs-source-dirs:      test
   main-is:             Spec.hs
-  other-modules:       Web.Spock.SimpleSpec,
+  other-modules:
+                       Web.Spock.FrameworkSpecHelper,
+                       Web.Spock.Internal.UtilSpec,
                        Web.Spock.SafeSpec,
-                       Web.Spock.FrameworkSpecHelper
-  build-depends:       hspec2 >=0.4 && <0.5,
-                       hspec-wai >=0.5 && <0.6,
-                       wai >=3.0 && <4.0,
-                       base >= 4 && < 5,
-                       text >= 0.11.3.1 && <1.3,
-                       Spock
+                       Web.Spock.SimpleSpec
+  build-depends:
+                       base,
+                       hspec,
+                       hspec-wai,
+                       http-types,
+                       Spock,
+                       text,
+                       wai
+
   ghc-options: -Wall -fno-warn-orphans
 
 source-repository head
diff --git a/src/Web/Spock/Internal/CoreAction.hs b/src/Web/Spock/Internal/CoreAction.hs
--- a/src/Web/Spock/Internal/CoreAction.hs
+++ b/src/Web/Spock/Internal/CoreAction.hs
@@ -10,10 +10,12 @@
     , setCookie, setCookie'
     , bytes, lazyBytes, text, html, file, json, blaze
     , requireBasicAuth
+    , preferredFormat, ClientPreferredFormat(..)
     )
 where
 
 import Web.Spock.Internal.Wire
+import Web.Spock.Internal.Util
 
 import Control.Arrow (first)
 import Control.Monad
@@ -60,6 +62,15 @@
       parseCookies = map parseCookie . T.splitOn ";" . T.concat . T.words
       parseCookie = first T.init . T.breakOnEnd "="
 
+-- | Tries to dected the preferred format of the response using the Accept header
+preferredFormat :: MonadIO m => ActionT m ClientPreferredFormat
+preferredFormat =
+  do mAccept <- header "accept"
+     case mAccept of
+       Nothing -> return PrefUnknown
+       Just t ->
+         return $ detectPreferredFormat t
+
 -- | Get the raw request body
 body :: MonadIO m => ActionT m BS.ByteString
 body =
@@ -201,13 +212,13 @@
 -- | Send text as a response body. Content-Type will be "text/plain"
 text :: MonadIO m => T.Text -> ActionT m a
 text val =
-    do setHeader "Content-Type" "text/plain"
+    do setHeader "Content-Type" "text/plain; charset=utf-8"
        bytes $ T.encodeUtf8 val
 
 -- | Send a text as response body. Content-Type will be "text/html"
 html :: MonadIO m => T.Text -> ActionT m a
 html val =
-    do setHeader "Content-Type" "text/html"
+    do setHeader "Content-Type" "text/html; charset=utf-8"
        bytes $ T.encodeUtf8 val
 
 -- | Send a file as response
diff --git a/src/Web/Spock/Internal/Util.hs b/src/Web/Spock/Internal/Util.hs
--- a/src/Web/Spock/Internal/Util.hs
+++ b/src/Web/Spock/Internal/Util.hs
@@ -1,7 +1,44 @@
+{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
 module Web.Spock.Internal.Util where
 
 import Network.HTTP.Types
 import Network.Wai.Internal
+import qualified Data.Text as T
+import qualified Data.HashMap.Strict as HM
+
+data ClientPreferredFormat
+   = PrefJSON
+   | PrefXML
+   | PrefHTML
+   | PrefText
+   | PrefUnknown
+   deriving (Show, Eq)
+
+mimeMapping :: HM.HashMap T.Text ClientPreferredFormat
+mimeMapping =
+    HM.fromList $
+    [ ("application/json", PrefJSON)
+    , ("text/javascript", PrefJSON)
+    , ("text/json", PrefJSON)
+    , ("application/javascript", PrefJSON)
+    , ("application/xml", PrefXML)
+    , ("text/xml", PrefXML)
+    , ("text/plain", PrefText)
+    , ("text/html", PrefHTML)
+    , ("application/xhtml+xml", PrefHTML)
+    ]
+
+detectPreferredFormat :: T.Text -> ClientPreferredFormat
+detectPreferredFormat t =
+    let (mimeTypeStr, _) = T.breakOn ";" t
+        mimeTypes = map (T.toLower . T.strip) $ T.splitOn "," mimeTypeStr
+        firstMatch [] = PrefUnknown
+        firstMatch (x:xs) =
+          case HM.lookup x mimeMapping of
+            Just pref -> pref
+            Nothing -> firstMatch xs
+    in firstMatch mimeTypes
+
 
 mapReqHeaders :: (ResponseHeaders -> ResponseHeaders) -> Response -> Response
 mapReqHeaders f resp =
diff --git a/src/Web/Spock/Shared.hs b/src/Web/Spock/Shared.hs
--- a/src/Web/Spock/Shared.hs
+++ b/src/Web/Spock/Shared.hs
@@ -11,7 +11,10 @@
     (-- * Helpers for running Spock
       runSpock, spockAsApp
      -- * Handeling requests
-    , request, header, cookie, body, jsonBody, jsonBody', files, UploadedFile (..)
+    , request, header, cookie
+    , preferredFormat, ClientPreferredFormat(..)
+    , body, jsonBody, jsonBody'
+    , files, UploadedFile (..)
     , params, param, param'
      -- * Sending responses
     , setStatus, setHeader, redirect, jumpNext, setCookie, setCookie', bytes, lazyBytes
diff --git a/test/Web/Spock/FrameworkSpecHelper.hs b/test/Web/Spock/FrameworkSpecHelper.hs
--- a/test/Web/Spock/FrameworkSpecHelper.hs
+++ b/test/Web/Spock/FrameworkSpecHelper.hs
@@ -32,6 +32,8 @@
                get "/subcomponent/subcomponent2/bar" `shouldRespondWith` "bar" { matchStatus = 200 }
          it "allows the definition of a fallback handler" $
             do get "/askldjas/aklsdj" `shouldRespondWith` "askldjas/aklsdj" { matchStatus = 200 }
+         it "detected the preferred format" $
+            do request "GET" "/preferred-format" [("Accept", "text/html,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8")] "" `shouldRespondWith` "html" { matchStatus = 200 }
     where
       verbTest verb verbVerbose =
           (verb "/verb-test")
diff --git a/test/Web/Spock/Internal/UtilSpec.hs b/test/Web/Spock/Internal/UtilSpec.hs
new file mode 100644
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/Web/Spock/Internal/UtilSpec.hs
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
+module Web.Spock.Internal.UtilSpec (spec) where
+
+import Web.Spock.Internal.Util
+
+import Test.Hspec
+
+spec :: Spec
+spec =
+     describe "Utils" $
+     do describe "detectPreferredFormat" $
+          do it "should detect json-only requests" $
+               do detectPreferredFormat "application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01" `shouldBe` PrefJSON
+                  detectPreferredFormat "application/json;" `shouldBe` PrefJSON
+                  detectPreferredFormat "text/javascript;" `shouldBe` PrefJSON
+             it "should detect browsers as html clients" $
+                do detectPreferredFormat "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8" `shouldBe` PrefHTML
+                   detectPreferredFormat "text/html;" `shouldBe` PrefHTML
+                   detectPreferredFormat "application/xhtml+xml;" `shouldBe` PrefHTML
+             it "should detect xml-only requests" $
+                do detectPreferredFormat "application/xml, text/xml, */*; q=0.01" `shouldBe` PrefXML
+                   detectPreferredFormat "application/xml;" `shouldBe` PrefXML
+                   detectPreferredFormat "text/xml;" `shouldBe` PrefXML
+             it "should detect text-only requests" $
+                do detectPreferredFormat "text/plain, */*; q=0.01" `shouldBe` PrefText
+                   detectPreferredFormat "text/plain;" `shouldBe` PrefText
diff --git a/test/Web/Spock/SafeSpec.hs b/test/Web/Spock/SafeSpec.hs
--- a/test/Web/Spock/SafeSpec.hs
+++ b/test/Web/Spock/SafeSpec.hs
@@ -25,6 +25,11 @@
          do get "foo" $ text "foo"
             subcomponent "/subcomponent2" $
               do get "bar" $ text "bar"
+       get "preferred-format" $
+         do fmt <- preferredFormat
+            case fmt of
+              PrefHTML -> text "html"
+              x -> text (T.pack (show x))
        hookAny GET $ text . T.intercalate "/"
 
 spec :: Spec
diff --git a/test/Web/Spock/SimpleSpec.hs b/test/Web/Spock/SimpleSpec.hs
--- a/test/Web/Spock/SimpleSpec.hs
+++ b/test/Web/Spock/SimpleSpec.hs
@@ -26,6 +26,11 @@
          do get "foo" $ text "foo"
             subcomponent "/subcomponent2" $
               do get "bar" $ text "bar"
+       get "/preferred-format" $
+         do fmt <- preferredFormat
+            case fmt of
+              PrefHTML -> text "html"
+              x -> text (T.pack (show x))
        hookAny GET $ text . T.intercalate "/"
 
 spec :: Spec