| Sander Tekelenburg 2005-11-27, 10:23 pm |
| In article <NOSPAmar2005-179EF9.20092926112005@freenews.iinet.net.au>,
Eric Lindsay <NOSPAmar2005@ericlindsay.com> wrote:
> In article <user-09E87D.06525926112005@freeloader.wanadoo.nl>,
> Sander Tekelenburg <user@domain.invalid> wrote:
[...]
>
> I like it. Be a bit of work to add types to links, given most of us
> probably haven't any idea exactly which MIME type matches whatever
> method is used to identify files in our particular operating system.
Well, if you serve files on the Web, you'd better make sure your server
provides proper Content-Type headers, so you need to know the right MIME
types anyway. I don't think adding TYPE attributes changes that.
For people who use HTML-generating tools, those tools could easily
automagically insert a proper TYPE attribute. (Which doesn't cover it
all - a correct TYPE attribute alone still leaves the issue of having to
configure the server to send proper Content-Type headers.)
> However I guess most people don't use a lot of links to things that are
> not web pages.
That's part of the problem :) Most links point to Web pages, so one
pointing to a PDF often surprises people.
> Hmm, is Windows still using file extensions to match
> files to applications? OS X seems to have now started moving to UTI,
> and maps back to MIME and file extensions back to them. Maybe I can ask
> the OS to supply the MIME type, since Spotlight should know the UTI.
For Mac OS X, RCDefaultApp provides convenient acces to this aspect of
LaunchServices.
To check what Content-Type your server sends, you can use iCab (through
its log function) or lynx or curl:
$ lynx -head -dump <URL>
$ curl -I <URL>
curl is part of the default Mac OS X install.
[...]
> I take it IE and Opera ignore it completely, like they should,
> rather than doing something silly?
That's my experience, yes. But even if they would do something silly,
IMO that's no good reason to change your HTML/CSS. The more Web
publishers try to hide bugs in browsers, the less incentive for those
browsermakers to fix those bug. Better to have those bugs visible.
--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/%7Etekelenb/>
|