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Subject

Author

Date

Does

Yeah

01-04-2006

lunaticfringe

Harlan Messinge...

Stan Brown

David Ross

Eric B. Bednarz

David Ross

Darin McGrew

Bruce Lewis

Eric Lindsay

Rob McAninch

Bruce Lewis

Stan Brown

Harlan Messinge...

Stan Brown

Alan J. Flavell

Harlan Messinge...

Stan Brown

Alan J. Flavell

Bruce Lewis

Harlan Messinge...

Michael Winter

Alan J. Flavell

Harlan Messinge...

Alan J. Flavell

Harlan Messinge...

Alan J. Flavell

David Dorward

Barbara de Zoet...

Michael Winter

Posted by Rob McAninch on January 4, 2006, 9:55 pm

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Eric Lindsay>:

>>>See also http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/basics.html#relative-url

>>I want to amplify Darin's reference, because this page includes the

>>important example href="./" that is too often neglected.

> I like that. So the idea is you could change all your references now to

> an older style default file like href="index.htm" to href="./" [...]

> Are there any disadvantages? Extra lookup time vs having the path

> including the actual file name used?

Technically there would be a brief lookup time (probably in the
millisecond range) for the server to consult the configuration and
then look for a default file to serve. As opposed to serving a
directly referenced file (which still requires some configuration
decisions from the server).

Nothing to worry about. Though be sure to configure the server's
search order for the correct default file.

--
Rob McAninch
http://rock13.com

Posted by Bruce Lewis on January 5, 2006, 10:29 am

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> Technically there would be a brief lookup time (probably in the

> millisecond range) for the server to consult the configuration and

> then look for a default file to serve. As opposed to serving a

> directly referenced file (which still requires some configuration

> decisions from the server).

I think this is a pessimistic view of how it would work. Only the very
worst web server implementations on very old hardware would require a
whole millisecond to do it.

More likely enough information would be cached in memory to make the
delay immeasurable.

Posted by Stan Brown on January 5, 2006, 11:30 am

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> >>I want to amplify Darin's reference, because this page includes the

> >>important example href="./" that is too often neglected.

> Eric Lindsay:

> > I like that. So the idea is you could change all your references now to

> > an older style default file like href="index.htm" to href="./" [...]

Yes, and this is a great time saving if you later have to migrate to
a different server such as an IIS one where the default is
"default.htm" or "default.html". On at least one such server, I found
"index.htm" didn't work.

> > Are there any disadvantages? Extra lookup time vs having the path

> > including the actual file name used?

No but there is one disadvantage on your end: if you have an image of
your site on your own computer, your browser won't know to serve up
the default file when it sees an HREF that ends in a "/". That makes
it harder to test all the links before uploading. (Mozilla shows a
file list in this situation.)

Fortunately, there's a way around that: the free Apache server
<http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi> is easy to install, and when
you have it running locally your browser connects to it
automatically. Since Apache is also the most popular server software
for "real" Web sites, this can be quite a good test of how your site
navigation will work when published.

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 21:55:08 -0500 from Rob McAninch <rob_13
@excite.com>:

> Technically there would be a brief lookup time (probably in the

> millisecond range) for the server to consult the configuration and

> then look for a default file to serve. As opposed to serving a

> directly referenced file (which still requires some configuration

> decisions from the server).

I doubt there would be even that, since the default file name would
most likely be held in RAM.

But we're in basic agreement: the performance penalty (if any) is
trivial, statistical "noise" compared to the time spent transmitting
the file.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

Posted by Harlan Messinger on January 5, 2006, 11:39 am

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Stan Brown wrote:

>>>

>>>>I want to amplify Darin's reference, because this page includes the

>>>>important example href="./" that is too often neglected.

>>Eric Lindsay:

>>>I like that. So the idea is you could change all your references now to

>>>an older style default file like href="index.htm" to href="./" [...]

> Yes, and this is a great time saving if you later have to migrate to

> a different server such as an IIS one where the default is

> "default.htm" or "default.html". On at least one such server, I found

> "index.htm" didn't work.

With IIS you can set the default document for a directory or for a whole
site to anything you want. Or you can declare several, and IIS looks for
each one until it finds one that actually exists in the requested directory.

Posted by Stan Brown on January 5, 2006, 4:36 pm

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Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:39:27 -0500 from Harlan Messinger

> Stan Brown wrote:

> >>>

> >>>>I want to amplify Darin's reference, because this page includes the

> >>>>important example href="./" that is too often neglected.

> >

> >>Eric Lindsay:

> >>

> >>>I like that. So the idea is you could change all your references now to

> >>>an older style default file like href="index.htm" to href="./" [...]

> >

> > Yes, and this is a great time saving if you later have to migrate to

> > a different server such as an IIS one where the default is

> > "default.htm" or "default.html". On at least one such server, I found

> > "index.htm" didn't work.

> With IIS you can set the default document for a directory or for a whole

> site to anything you want.

Yes, if you have the privilege to do so -- which I didn't. And the
fellow who did have privilege was unwilling to tweak any settings
because he didn't understand IIS. (Given that it's Microsoft
software, I sympathized.) So I set my _local_ Apache to find only
"default.htm", and then I could test what the IIS server would do
before I uploaded files to it.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you

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