[whatwg] "C:\fakepath\" in HTML5

[Bil Corry]

Ian Hickson wrote on 3/24/2009 12:09 AM: 
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Alex Henrie wrote:
>> First, this change is dishonest. It tells JavaScript that the file is 
>> stored somewhere that it is not. And why say anything, true or not, 
>> about where the file is stored at all? All JavaScript needs to know is 
>> that the file is called "upload.txt". It's easier to parse it that way 
>> too, since the "C:\fakepath\" will never have to be stripped off.
> 
> The original plan was to just have the filename. Unfortunately, it turns 
> out that if you do that, there are certain sites that break, because they 
> expect the path (and they expect a Windows path, no less). This is why 
> Opera and IE8 return a fake path -- not because HTML5 says to do it. In 
> fact I made HTML5 say it because they were doing it.

Which sites?  Any site that *requires* a Windows path clearly isn't interested in inter-operating with other browsers/platforms; heck, it means they've limited their testing to just Windows/IE.  Don't punish the rest of us for their poor testing/programming.


- Bil