[whatwg] Content-Type (was Style sheet loading and parsing

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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/