On May 23, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
...
Over on WRI-Talk[1] we've got a discussion going about URL design[2].
The debate is whether <http://domain.example/blah.xyz> or
<http://domain.example/blah> is more appropriate.
The argument for using file name extensions is that they can provide a
clue as to what sort of file is being pointed to, to help decide if
it's worth the trouble fetching it, or *how* to fetch it. (For
example, when you known in advance that alink points to a PDF,
<http://urlx.org/google.com/0a8e8> is a URL without a suffix, which is
quite understandable, because the whole point of urlx.org is to make
short URLs. It redirects to a Google Cache URL ending in ".pdf", which
is quite understandable, because it's a cache of a PDF document. But
the cached version itself is HTML.
you might want to override your browser's default behaviour, end
explicitly tell it to open that in a new window/tab, or save it to
disk and/or open it in another application.)
...
Long ago, when Mozilla was told to open a link in a new window, it
would fetch the Content-Type to see whether the resource was actually
one that should be handled by a helper app instead. Mozilla browsers
don't do that any more, and nor does any other browser I know of,
because it made for a horrid user experience.
Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
