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 Administrative / General / 6900
6899  |  6901
Subject: 
Re: Stick in the mud...
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Tue, 13 Jun 2000 18:12:33 GMT
Viewed: 
1142 times
  
In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
which helps deter sloppy (i.e. wrong) URLs from being propagated.

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 without a lecture to the user on
"proper" URL syntax, let's please remember why computers were invented and
who is supposed to be in charge during the user-computer experience.

One hint, it's not the computer. And it's not the system administrator
either, at least not to the extent of dictating how the user should
interact.

Having said that, I think what you propose as a way to catch omitted
slashes seems reasonable.

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 (i.e., from links at
other pages) to be wrong, therein lies the can of worms.  Hmm, a server could
certainly look at the HTTP referrer on-the-fly and decide how lenient to be
based on the origin of the URL.

--Todd

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 nice if the server would just output the intended page without
sending a moved permanently error, increasing network traffic and log size.

Under no circumstances would any sane webmaster try to enforce trailing
slashes today given the De Facto standard, and the probability of losing
hits/customers.

KL



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Stick in the mud...
 
(...) 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)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Stick in the mud...
 
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)

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