RE: XHTML image problems

At 11:18 AM 3/18/2000 , Bart Szyszka wrote:
>No, I was talking about locally. Someone saves the image locally in Windows
>or on the Mac or on Linux and they won't be able to just double-click on the file
>in their file managing program and have it load in the image viewer set for GIF.

Because their browser isn't well integrated into their system, not
because of something that W3C is doing wrong.  W3C is giving the browser
all the information it needs in order to Do The Right Thing with the
image file.

>They'd either have to set its MIME type individually if their OS permitted that or
>rename it to give it a .gif file extension.

No, the browser, running on their system, should -know- something
to the effect of "Well, I just got a file that is image/gif -- and
because I know the environment in which I operate, I know that unless
I name this foo.gif, the rest of the operating system won't recognize
it.  So I'll give the default filename as foo.gif in the 'save'
prompt."  And knowing that, the browser will Do The Right Thing and
all will be well.

(Alternately, if individual mime types are allowed, the browser should
set the mime type explicitly on the filename.)

It's not the responsibility of the server to know how the recipient
will be using the file; the burden shouldn't be on the W3C to "guess"
what's needed and rename as appropriate.

BTW, the way the W3C server works, and why it doesn't give out a file
that is explicitly named .gif or .jpg or .png or something is that
they check to see what file names you can accept and send you the best
fit.  I -think- the preferred format is...png?  Then gif?

By not hard-coding the file type into the URI (in other words, by not
saying SRC="valid.gif" but saying SRC="valid" instead), they allow for
future expansion, such as changing the order to SVG, PNG, GIF or
whatever, without having to recode every single URI on the site.

The obligation -should- be on the browser to Do The Right Thing with
files it receives -- not on the server.

-- 
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Become AWARE of Web Accessibility!                  http://aware.hwg.org/
The Spring 2000 Virtual Dog Show is now open!     http://www.dogshow.com/

Received on Saturday, 18 March 2000 14:28:32 UTC