[CS-FSLUG] Is FireFox anti-microsoft?

[Timothy R. Butler]

> Create an html file (anywhere on your disk) that contains these lines:
>         <a href="/index.html">TEST LINK</a>
>         <img src='/Sample.gif' width='20' height='20' border='1' />
> You can change the links to path of any html/graphics files on the 
> same drive as this test file.  Open this test file in IE and the image 
> will appear and the link will work.  In Firefox the image does not 
> appear and the link does not work

	Nor should it. That isn't correct... at best, IE is just doing what it 
always does... accepting broken code (in the case of applying this to a 
local file system).

	What exactly is the root on a Windows system? Well, technically there 
isn't a real one, but most likely it would be c:\. However, wait! If 
you work your way "up" in Windows Explorer, "Desktop" is the root. But 
desktop is *really* located at c:\windows\desktop or elsewhere on the 
drive. As such, if it works on IE it is only because IE is being overly 
generous in trying to figure out how to apply *nix naming to the only 
major OS that doesn't use it.

	Technically, it probably shouldn't work since URL's are *nix-like by 
nature and so a browser should act like it is a *nix address unless 
there is a drive letter or something. :-)

> Here's a real life example.  Suppose you have a website with static 
> content.  You want to "show" this website to someone that has no 
> internet access[*].  Why not simply copy the entire website to a cdrom 
> and use that.  This approach will work with IE, but not Firefox; and 
> the folks at Firefox say this isn't a bug.  But I do.  Afterall, one 
> could argue that virtual domains are something like windows drive 
> letters.  When you ask a broswer to get /index.html from a website - 
> you really want $DOCUMENT_ROOT/index.html from the remote server - not 
> index.html from the root of the entire file system.  On a local 
> windows file system asking for /index.html is asking for 
> $CURRENT_DRIVE/index.html - but Firefox wants to get index.html from 
> the root of the file system, which doesn't exist on windows.

	Well, that's up to the server and not the browser, though. When the 
browser asks for the document it says something like "I'm looking at 
www.ofb.biz and I want /." It is up to the server where the stuff 
actually comes from. :-)

	In a way this is annoying, but I think it really is correct. There's 
no safe way to know how to read "/" in Windows... other than perhaps to 
presume it is the root of the current disk, but that is still rather 
messy.

	-Tim

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Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
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