On 2009-02-24 02:39, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
At 23:27 +0100 UTC, on 2009-02-23, Helmut Tischer wrote: [...]Andreas Gohr schrieb:web tools do not care for extensions. It's the content-type header that counts. ...[...]For example if there is a search result or someone sends a "funny" link, my motivation to follow the link by sure depends on whether it pretends to be a .jpg, .doc, .ppt, .pdf or unpredictable filetype where I only know that it is a html if I know that the destination site is a DokuWiki, and in this case no ending means actually html.Why? As Andreas said, file name extensions have no meaning on the Web. Just because a link ends in ".jpg" doesn't mean it is a JPEG; just because it ends in ".html" doesn't mean it's HTML. (Yes, I've seen actual ".jpg" links in the wild that point to quite different things.) There's nothing in a link itself that can tell you what file type it points to. This can only be conveyed through meta information -- be it a Content-Type header, or the trustworthyness of the sender of the funny link. (And in email, without good use of encryption, you can't even be sure it came from who it says ;)) To be nice to wary users, HTML let's you provide a type attribute to <a>. But that's just a service for the user, and most users won't ever know, because most browsers do nothing useful with it.
One advantage of adding an extension is that if you do a "wget http://wiki.../some_file.html"; or curl etc, that it gets saved automatically with the right extention, ready to be clicked on when presented in a list by a e.g. windows explorer. -- Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Technology Services Tel +32 16 397.525 Interleuvenlaan 86, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.552 *********************************************************************** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, ^^, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, ~., * * stop, end, ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, KJOB, * * ^X^X, :D::D, kill -9 1, kill -1 $$, shutdown, init 0, Alt-F4, * * Alt-f-e, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Alt-SysRq-reisub, Stop-A, AltGr-NumLock, ... * * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * *********************************************************************** -- DokuWiki mailing list - more info at http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:mailinglist