[Leica] Re: Less Talkin', More Picturin'

[Jeff Moore <jbm@jbm.org>]

2003-12-15-14:12:55 Aaron Sandler:
> Oh dear.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  I just checked them on two 
> different computers and they both work.  (Windows machines running internet 
> explorer.)  That page was created using photoshop's automatic web photo 
> gallery thing.
> 
> Do any of you web gurus know what's wrong?

Have a look at the paths to the pictures.  Here's the URL given for
one of the thumbnails:

  http://www.duke.edu/~ajs2/Pix2003/thumbnails\ahh%20tree.jpg

...and here's the URL given for the underlying photo:

  http://www.duke.edu/~ajs2/Pix2003/pages\ahh%20tree.htm

Note the backslashes ("\") where the proper separator between
directory ("folder") levels is the slash ("/").  Backslashes used this
way are a Windows (and DOS before it) thing.

A URL like:

  http://www.duke.edu/~ajs2/Pix2003/pages/ahh%20tree.htm

works fine.  Oh, note the "%20", which is an encoding of a space
character.  Having space characters in file and directory names
generally works, encoded as above, but avoiding them can reduce the
likelihood of some other classes of problem.

If some browsers displayed this page as you intended (to distinguish
this from "correctly"), I can only guess that the browsers have some
workaround built-in: perhaps they try the URL as written, then rewrite
it with slashes instead of backslashes and try again if the target
wasn't found?

This sort of browser hack seems like a bad idea to me -- it would mask
errors in sites, and, as seen here, allow you view your page before
publishing the address publicly and think it would load properly when
it actually wouldn't.  Were I prone to anti-Microsoft conspiracy
theory, I'd note that this would work out well for them: page
hierarchies incorrectly using the Windows separator convention would
view fine from other Windows machines, leading to a perception that
the non-Microsoft software which doesn't show them as hoped is what is
broken, when the opposite is the case.

Consider trying a few browsers for your personal testing, or at least
one from the Mozilla family, which seems particularly close to
standards-compliant these days:

  http://mozilla.org/

Firebird and the main Mozilla branch each have their appeal.

 -Jeff
- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html