Subject:
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Re: Stick in the mud...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Tue, 13 Jun 2000 16:59:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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1368 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> I've been debating how to "fix" this situation. Though it's certainly not
> broken from a technical perspective, one could argue that it's broken from
> a human-factors perspective because people have come to have unreasonable
> expectations about making sloppy URLs, namely that it's so common for servers
> to add a trailing slash when the user forgets it or is lazy. I think it's a
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?
> terribly unfortunate thing when servers do this (IMHO they should instead give
> a lecture page about proper URL form and only then act in a fault-tolerant way
> and take the user to the most likely intended destination -- or give a list of
> close matches), but it seems to be a long-standing tradition. :-/
You may have the technical slant on your side in this argument, but as many
have pointed out before, you're all wet when it comes to the reality of the
way people type or say URLs. I don't think I've ever heard a tv host
say "check us out on the web at www dot abcnews dot come slash gma slash".
Like it or not, people are going to "forget" the trailing slash, and unlike
most websites they may go to that forgive or make up for it, you don't seem to
like doing it.
I just went to www.lugnet.com/members
What happens there is broken. It is not helpful, it is not informative, it
does absolutely nothing to suggest that there IS something to be seen if I
only had "remembered" to add a trailing slash. I'd go so far as to say it is
a waste of my time to even end up with the page your server is feeding me -
why not just bounce people back to lugnet.com (or is that lugnet.com/ - dunno,
since the server ads the slash for me there)? At least from the main page I
get a clickable link to the members section.
> I might add a check which looks to see if </foo/bar/> is a "real" URL before
> giving an empty page when </foo/bar> is accessed. It would prevent having two
> different pages </foo/bar> and </foo/bar/> (the latter being a short form of
> </foo/bar/index>). Then, if </foo/bar/> is a "real" URL, it could either
> auto-forward from </foo/bar> to </foo/bar/> or give an error page like this
> one:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/lsahs
>
> which helps deter sloppy (i.e. wrong) URLs from being propagated.
No it doesn't. People will see that, note the "WRONG URL" for just a second,
and click on the link. Some will take a look at the url in the link and
probably not notice any difference between what they typed and what's in the
link you provide.
Its your system, so you can do what you want with it, but your insistence on
this level of "technical accuracy" when it isn't necessary is and always will
be silly. If you're going to do it, though, why not throw up a paragraph or
two preaching to the usefulness of this sort of anal-retentive attention to
detail instead of just "WRONG URL"? At least then one or two people might
actually learn something, even if it will be a tidbit of info that won't
matter much on 99.9% of the rest of the sites they visit each day...
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Stick in the mud...
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| (...) 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...
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| (...) 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...
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| (...) 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)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Stick in the mud...
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| (...) 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)
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