Yes, you hit on a pet peeve. Extensions for content type not
implementation.
When designing the JavaOne web site 5 years ago we made every page
available in 4 formats which was controlled by the extension.
standard ones:
javaone/2001/session-1234/detail.html (for desktop browser visitors)
javaone/2001/session-1234/detail.xml (for crawling by 3rd party data
harvesters)
two custom types:
javaone/2001/session-1234/detail.lite (for small screen devices)
javaone/2001/session-1234/detail.prt (for printing)
-John
Ian Kallen wrote:
My two cents: When file extensions identify mime types, I think that's
fine; by convention you get what you expect without having to request
it first and read the Content-type response header. However, URL's
that have ".do" (the struts idiom) or ".jsp" or ".php" are revealing
implementation details and should be avoided. On the last struts app I
worked on, I specifically cfg'd the controller to use .html so I
wouldn't be exposing the tell-tale ".do" extensions.
Matt Raible wrote:
I like file extensions personally, but I don't really have a valid
reason. Maybe because .html is serving up HTML. Is that really an
implementation detail?
On 5/3/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is a subtopic of the overall discussion about the new url
structure. I think we can make this decision can be made apart from
the
general discussion.
My current position is that file extensions should not be used for
these
reasons ...
1. as described by this w3c document about choosing urls, it is a best
practice not to include file extensions because the represent an
implementation detail. urls are virtual and do not need file
extensions
to be valid. http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
2. we can't make file extensions work for all urls anyways, so it seems
a little hacky and inconsistent to use them only for part of the url
structure.
3. it is always possible to map the virtual urls into real files in any
way desired. how a url is served up is an implementation detail and
should not affect what the url is.
I didn't copy over the discussion about this that started on the wiki,
but one item that came up was how media files will work. I am not
saying that our media files (gif, jpg, png, etc) can't have file
extensions either, i am only talking about urls to our html and xml
content right now.
So, does everyone agree with that? Does anyone still think we should
use file extensions and why?
-- Allen
