-----Original Message----- From: Paul Gray Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 5:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Multimedia naming coventions and web pages
Hi, I hope this isn't considered off-topic. I have just started to organize my multimedia files with standardized naming conventions and a meaningful folder structure before linking them into my Legacy file. There have been threads in the past about naming convention 'systems' that were very useful, and I got a lot of good information from them. My question is more of the 'technical considerations' in naming conventions vis a vis creating web pages. As I understand it from previous posts, Windows allows almost anything in a file name with the exception of a few special characters, whereas web pages may not be as forgiving. Examples I've seen quoted on the list have be problems with commas and spaces within the name. Although I currently have no plans to create web pages, I don't want to create potential problems for myself in the future. Can anyone provide general "do's and don'ts" in naming files so that web pages (and not just Windows) will work? Thanks Paul Gray Hi Paul, This is not something which I consider to be off-topic, but who knows!!! Firstly, be aware that Windows is very liberal when considering the case of characters, it is case insensitive, whereas browsers and servers are case sensitive. It would be convenient for me to say "hence, only use upper or lower case", except this means that I would not be taking my own advice! For example I may have a file named "RonFergy.jpg", so the point I will make is that if you use a mixture of upper and lower case then make sure it is a sensible use and is systematic. Do not vary from the system which you have devised. This also applies to the file-name extension. Only use alpha-numeric characters in your file-names except that an underscore (_) or hyphen (-) may be used as well. No doubt others will tell you that some other characters can be used, true, but my advice is to avoid them. I think that A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ and -, is enough for anyone! Never use spaces. You may well have seen people on this list saying that they cannot register because the URL doesn't work, almost always it is because they have copied/pasted the URL from an email which has split, thus creating a space. The server changes this to the ASCII form of %20 which whilst it means the same, the browser doesn't think it is. In other words, ron fergy.html is not the same as ron%20fergy.html. Now to the extensions. As mentioned above, upper and lower cases are not the same, so decide which you are going to use for *all* your extensions and stick to it. Note that whilst for all intents and purposes .jpeg and .jpg are the same, they are different as far as browsers are concerned. You would probably like to know that Legacy is not awfully keen on .jpeg and this can cause problems, so I stick to .jpg. Legacy also has problems with other forms of image extensions; when creating the web pages it considers that only .jpg is a valid extension and hence changes others in the scripts to .jpg. This is rather unfortunate if one has a .gif or .png and require the transparency. They can only be changed manually on each page. I have been reporting this bug for years but to no avail! Oh, and the images don't display either. Finally, when you come to create your web pages do note that whilst the URL extensions .html and .htm are both valid, and do the same job, they are not the same, so again decide which you are going to use, whether upper or lower case, and, again, stick to it! Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
