Posted by d on 01/26/06 20:57

"Gordon Burditt" <gordonb.alfau@burditt.org> wrote in message
news:11ti4ohfr5gv3e7@corp.supernews.com...
> >It may be by design, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily good.
>
> I believe it is possible with Apache to explicitly state the type
> of each and every page without the use of *any* file extensions.
> This gets cumbersome to maintain, though. Some people advocate it
> because they want URLs that won't change with web server technology.
> I'm not sure that matters for stuff that it's not reasonable to
> bookmark or put in a search engine, like the current contents of
> your shopping cart, or a page showing a product that will itself
> obsolete and no longer be sold much faster than web server technology.
>
>>Surely a dynamic web server should appear exactly the same as a static
>>one - all files that contain HTML when viewed should be called .html.
>
> And absolutely *NO* files should be called .htm, ever.
>
> Why? MIME types are the way the server communicates to the browser
> what the content is. Not file extensions.

But for human readability, the extension should reflect the content, surely?

> And whether you like it or not, it *is* possible to have a page
> that changes its type (as presented to the browser) based on the
> results of the query (for instance, if there is a single result,
> it's video, if there is not a single result, it's a page full of
> choices of videos).

That's what Location: headers are for ;)

>>If you want them called any number of things, then be my guest. I just
>>happen to think presentation matters.
>
> And what do file extensions have to do with presentation?

The same thing a shop front has to do with a shop's interior :) It's part
of your "client-facing presence", and as such represents your company. I
can understand if other people don't feel like it represents them, but as
something of a stickler for details, it's something I notice.

> Gordon L. Burditt

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