Hello Ian,<br><br>One use case, from my point-of-view, was to allow for non-networked form submits<br><br>For example, if you had a computer or device that did NOT have a network connection, and you did not have (and did not want to have or cannot have) a local HTTP server running. Then you could use such a data URL to make things happen.
<br><br>Also, with the use of data URL's for <img>'s, for <object>'s, and for <form>'s, you could have an entire HTML-based application contained in exactly one file. <br><br>Which is again useful in situations where you do NOT have network access.
<br><br>Also, it is useful to have the entire HTML-based application contained in "one file" when you want to put it into some other XML document. (Like in RSS, Atom, or XMPP/Jabber.)<br><br><br>What really motivated me to think about it is that is that I was writing a blog post about how to create HTML e-mail signatures with hCards built into them.
<br><br>I wanted to include a form to help them do this. The reader would fill in their name, e-mail address, etc, and it would generate HTML code they could use for their HTML e-mail signature.<br><br>However, I didn't want the form to make a request back to my server. (Because people could be reading this in their feed reader were they have the blog post cached from my feed.) I wanted it to be entirely self contained within the blog post.
<br><br>So, as you mentioned, one solution is JavaScript. However, JavaScript has a couple problem. #1: It complex. (Yes... I'm lazy :-) ) #2: Not all blog readers will allow the execution of JavaScript.<br><br>Also,... another reason against making a call on my server.... The blogging software I wrote works by having each blog post be a file. Each file is an Atom document. Not an Atom <feed> though. But an Atom <entry>. (And yes, it is legal to have an Atom <entry> as the root element.)
<br><br>So having everything in one file is easier and simpler for me. (And again, yes, I'm lazy, and like things easy.) Preferably, I'd like to do <form>'s, <img>'s, and <object>'s with data URL's.<br>
<br><br>See ya<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/24/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ian Hickson</b> <<a href="mailto:ian@hixie.ch">ian@hixie.ch</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:<br>><br>> <form method="POST" action="### DATA URL HERE ###"><br>> <input type="text" name="given_name" />
<br>> <input type="text" name="family_name" /><br>> <input type="submit" value="generate letter" /><br>> </form><br>><br>> How would you get the value of "given_name" and "family_name" into the
<br>> data URL?<br><br>You can't, unless you use JavaScript, I think.<br><br><br>> What I want is something like...<br>><br>> <form method="POST" action="data:,To whom it may concern. My give name is
<br>> '%%{given_name}' and my family name is '%%{family_name}'. Sincerely,<br>> %%{given_name} %%{family_name}"><br><br>Interesting. What's the actual use case? I hadn't really envisaged data:<br>being used for anything but debugging.
<br><br>--<br>Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL<br><a href="http://ln.hixie.ch/">http://ln.hixie.ch/</a> U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.<br>Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">-- </span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> Charles Iliya Krempeaux,
B.Sc.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> charles @ <a href="http://reptile.ca">reptile.ca</a></span>
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> supercanadian @ <a href="http://gmail.com">gmail.com</a></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> developer weblog: <a href="http://ChangeLog.ca/">http://ChangeLog.ca/</a></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
___________________________________________________________________________</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> Make Television
<a href="http://maketelevision.com/">http://maketelevision.com/</a></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">