General Discussions about LUGNET : 6828


Administrative / General / 6828

Re: Stick in the mud... —Scott Arthur

(...) I thought that was clear. The fact that you think I am able to play semantics means perhaps it is not clear enough. Naturally, is does not have to be clear, anything other than deliberately misleading may well be OK. I want LUGNET to grow & (...) (24 years ago, 9-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Larry Pieniazek

(...) Scott, you're all wet. The stuff you're picking at is perfectly clear to any reasonably clued person. However, if you really really want to be picky, why not pick on THIS (the last page) instead. See the admin > financial > donations page for (...) (24 years ago, 9-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) Actually, those changes are actually all still in place and still working. For example, if you guess and type in: (URL) be auto-forwarded to the correct URL: (URL) if you omit the trailing / character and type in (URL) it gives a blank FTX (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Larry Pieniazek

In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes: <snip> (...) You're technically correct. Leaving off a trailing slash is technically "wrong" syntax. But before we condemn servers for automatically adding it back in and doing what the user expects (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Eric Joslin

(...) That's one theory. There are others. I'm sure a libertarian realises that a given system admin can choose how to admin his own system. eric (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Mike Stanley

(...) either, (...) Sure he does. 'Course, if that given system administrator attention to a level of technical detail that almost no other system around insists on, I'd say that system administrator is more interested in being arrogantly correct (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Eric Joslin

(...) Yes, but that's a rather extreme example, don't you think? I don't think the two situations equate at all. It's nto as if users are finding themselves unable to find the discussion groups or anything. eric (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Mike Stanley

(...) No, I don't think it is extreme. In fact, I think it might just be applicable to LUGNET in some way, given the fact that many of the set listing pages have affiliate links on them to eToys (and aren't there some pages with links containing (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Eric Joslin

(...) Yes, and I'm sure the lost revenue from people who are trying to open a browser and point to Lugnet to find a set (without using the search feature, mind you) and follow that link through to eToys to buy the item, adds up toa staggering (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) It's not that, Mike, it's that /castle is actually a valid URL of a valid webpage (it just happens to be empty). When I view that, it shows me a button which says "Start This Page" and I could click that and type in content onto that page if I (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) You mean the homepage isn't static? *duck* Don't get me started on that :) KL (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) OK, it's now fixed. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but what I kluged up is plenty safe. Now, if you now type in the URL without the trailing slash: (URL) will silently auto-forward you to the correct URL: (URL) for if you type it in wrong by (...) (24 years ago, 30-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Cary Clark

Thanks for fixing this, Todd. One annoyance in Internet Explorer is that the history captured in the Address text box does not keep the trailing slash. So, even if I typed the slash by hand once, if I use the down-arrow to save typing and go to the (...) (24 years ago, 30-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

LUGNET Password? —Scott Sanburn

Todd & All, I was looking into doing some things that LUGNET had to offe,r but I can't seem to remember how to get / change my password to LUGNET. I am a member, so what do I need to do? Any help is greatly appreciated! :) Scott #227! S. -- (...) (24 years ago, 30-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: LUGNET Password? —Todd Lehman

(...) (URL) (24 years ago, 30-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: LUGNET Password? —Scott Sanburn

odd & All, (...) do you get your original password at? If I have it, I don't know of it. That is my stumbling block! Scott S. -- (...) ***...*** Please visit (URL) (24 years ago, 30-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) I wonder if this was the IE trailing-/ issue that ++Lar was referring to last week. (...) It's too bad it was there in the first place, but I'm glad to hear it's no longer an issue for you. --Todd (24 years ago, 31-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Larry Pieniazek

(...) Yes. ++Lar (24 years ago, 31-Jan-01, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) I'm of two minds on this. :) It's not so bad when a server adds a trailing slash when someone types a URL in wrong by hand (like something they saw printed wrong on purpose in a print advertisement), but when a server allows _written_ URLs (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Scott Arthur

(...) If I were paying for a website to be designed for me for a commercial purpose, I'd want it designed to maximise the ease of use and to make any user feel comfortable - I doubt this would include lecturing users on web use. Scott A (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) I think trailing slashes should be optional by specification. Even if they are not optional in the spec, it is optional in the De Facto spec given the existing base of installed servers that handle it gracefully (to the end user). It would be (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) Do you mean that if a browser requested some page /foo/bar which didn't exist, but a page /foo/bar/ existed, that it would be nice if the server output the content of /foo/bar/ when it was requested to serve /foo/bar ? If so, wouldn't that (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) wouldn't (...) /foo/bar/ (...) Optionally yes. The admin could choose the least expensive mode to operate in, redirect or rewrite (probably redirect now that you mention it). KL (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Matthew Miller

(...) Ah, that makes sense. Really, in order for the proposed ("/foo/bar" exactly equals "/foo/bar/") scheme to work, there needs to be _no_ default index.html file. Or rather, directory index files need to be special in some way. (Just like you'd (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Tim Courtney

(...) Isn't it possible for the server to generate a /foo/bar page when its requested, and see that /foo/bar/ exists, then auto-redirect the user to /foo/bar/, therefore evading this problem? -Tim (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Frank Filz

(...) Oh goody, the xoom factor... What is really needed is a protocol to inform the owner of the referring page that they have a bad link. (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) What does Xoom do? (...) That would be awesome!!! --Todd (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Larry Pieniazek

(...) Without a doubt! And the market will pass judgement on whether he's made a good choice about whether to be correct, or forgiving of errors. Assuming he doesn't have such a first mover advantage that there aren't viable alternatives handy, that (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Mike Stanley

(...) What makes you think users "forget" or are "lazy" if they don't enter a trailing slash? Do you honestly believe that the majority of users even know they they "should" put in the trailing slash? (...) You may have the technical slant on your (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) OK, let's add "unaware" to that list; some users may be unaware that a URL is actually /foo/bar/ and perceive it instead as /foo/bar -- especially if the URL was printed wrong somewhere, such as a print ad. Note: If the server actually (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) What filesystem allows file bar and directory bar in the foo directory? The only way to utilize the above hypothetical URL's is to use mod-rewrite (or similar). You could easially disable slash-optional rewrite when a mod-rewrite rule is (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Matthew Miller

(...) Yeah, I've been wondering this too. It's pretty longstanding practice in unix that "ls /usr" and "ls /usr/" are going to get me exactly the same thing. For that matter, "stat /usr" and "stat /usr/" both get me the same thing.... And I'm (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) More specifically try to create a file and a directory with the same parent and same name. It doesn't work on any operating system I know of (ok I haven't tried it on a Mac). KL (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) On servers where URLs map directly to filespecs, you can't have both /foo/bar and /foo/bar/ unless the underlying filesystem differentiates between the two. I'm not aware of any filesystems which simultaneously allow both /foo/bar and (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) In this example, if /foo/bar doesn't exist the user should get what /foo/bar/ points to, one way or another. Not a page to help them get to it. Either redirect (current practice) or rewrite (possible option) /foo/bar to /foo/bar/. If you (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) I agree that this is ideal in cases where the user may have mis-typed the URL by hand (or had been given the wrong URL from, say, a print ad in a magazine, and they typed it in by hand). I'm not sure it's ideal for cases where someone (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Frank Filz

(...) Except that it's a pain to get a web page author to fix broken links on their page which is effectively what you're saying. Given the way web pages currently work, I think it's important to keep from breaking web pages. To this extent, I have (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that /foo/bar should give a 404 error (page not found) if the HTTP referrer was from another webpage, I just meant that I don't believe it's an ideal solution to give a 301 (automatic redirect) in that case. (...) (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Frank Filz

(...) I hoped you didn't plan to give a 404 or a blank page, what I was saying is that it would be annoying to be using someone else's page of links (because it's so complete) and always get a "lecture" page until you can convince them to fix it. Of (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) Nope, definitely not! (...) Aha, I see. OK. BTW, any particular reason why to use the form (2 URLs) One thing which can also be annoying with some auto-redirects is that it (...) It depends on which type of redirect you use. If you use a real (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Larry Pieniazek

(...) Well, no. Not any user. Some users can't see at all, you know. Some users have trouble typing shifted characters and therefore use all lower case or ALL CAPS because they really don't have a choice. Those users are worth accomodating, I feel. (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Frank Filz

(...) I guess I just don't like having the document be in a file "index.html", but want a directory with related documents. (...) Is that something one can access by creating an html file, or do you have to have access to the web server code in some (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Eric Kingsley

(...) I don't know of any browsers that allow it but there are tools that let you do it. For Example: (URL) is an addon to your browser that lets you use aliases for finding pages. In Networds case you have to register a "netword" and its link and a (...) (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Matthew Miller

(...) 308 Fix Your %$*@ Web Page ? (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) ROTFL!!! Yes!!!!!! That's exactly what we need! And it spams the owner of the page with the wrong URL. :) --Todd (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Kevin Loch

(...) /foo/bar/ (...) someone (...) What's the difference between someone typing in a url into a browser and typing a url into a text editor? Not much, except perhaps the person typing it into a text editor should consider proper netiquette. A good (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) There's a big difference: When a person types a URL in wrong by hand, it's usually either a mistake or because they were being lazy (not to imply that there's anything wrong with being lazy) or because they weren't aware of the actual (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Mike Stanley

(...) I'd go so far as to say the majority of users are "unaware" of this sort of thing. And it will remain that way, probably forever. Have you seen lots of print ads floating around that contain trailing slashes? And sorry if I seemed overly (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Todd Lehman

(...) I've seen more without than with, but some of both. But more often than either, I've seen root-level URLs, often without the slash and even without the www prefix. :) (...) Ahhh, it's spring/summer cold season. :) Drink lots of hot chicken (...) (24 years ago, 13-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Stick in the mud... —Matthew Miller

(...) If I recall the spec properly, there *is* a defined special case where (URL) exactly equal to (URL) fact, the first / isn't part of the path part of the URL. (24 years ago, 14-Jun-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Steve Bliss

Two advance notes: 1. Sorry to bring a possibly dead-horse issue again, but I actually have a new data point to add. 2. There didn't seem to be a truly stellar place to hang this follow-up, so I just picked a message that was high up in the thread. (...) (24 years ago, 18-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Matthew Miller

(...) This sounds like a bug in IE. (URL) refers to a different thing than (URL). (24 years ago, 18-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Steve Bliss

(...) Technically, yes. Human-factors-wise, no -- most people see them as the same. Steve (24 years ago, 21-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Matthew Miller

(...) It's a technical bug. :) It's alright for IE to generally assume that they are the same for the purposes of making a history, but it's wrong to use a mechanism that doesn't work if they're different. Web servers generally return a 301 Moved (...) (24 years ago, 21-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Steve Bliss

(...) That wouldn't fix the issue with LUGNET, because LUGNET doesn't redirect san-trailing-slash hits. Steve (24 years ago, 21-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Matthew Miller

(...) In cases where there isn't a redirection, it shouldn't do anything fancy to it. How would that not fix the issue? Maybe I misunderstood the problem. I thought you were saying that IE stores (URL) and (URL) as (URL) and (URL) in the history. (...) (24 years ago, 21-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Todd Lehman

(...) That's what I heard too. Hmm. That jives with my findings from MSIE3 long ago -- it was confused about the coloring. But here, this is an even worse bug. Steve, what version of MSIE are you seeing this with? The thing is, if you've never (...) (24 years ago, 21-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)

Re: Trailing Slashes (Re: Stick in the mud...) —Steve Bliss

(...) MSIE5.0 (...) I agree completely. Too bad we live in a world with MSIE. (...) Bookmarks seem to work correctly -- the trailing slash is retained. (...) I'll double-check. Steve (24 years ago, 22-Aug-00, to lugnet.admin.general)