Re: web file naming conventions

["Walker, Arlen P" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

     Is there any advantage to naming web files index.html, aside
     from the fact that you shorten URLs slightly?

That's actually a *big* advantage. If you name the web page by the default
name, then all a customer needs is your comany site name to get started
viewing your material. For example, www.ibm.com gets you to the opening
page at IBM, while www.microsoft.com gets you to microsoft. Imagine how
hard it might be if the opening page was named some random name. Imagine
having to put in "www.microsoft.com/sylvia.html" for example. Why would you
want to make your customers guess what your home page name is?

     Is there any technical advantage to using .html or .htm, other
     than that .html is more cool?

.htm merely marks you as one of those poor souls who has to do web design
under an operating system that can't handle useful file names; other than
that there's really no difference at all.

     Are there other filenames that a browser will open if you
     point it to a dir? I just tested it and index.html, index.htm,
     and home.html can all be default files, with precedence in the
     order I gave, where they are all in the same dir.

This is a local phenomenon, not to be confused with a representative
sampling. The default file names and the order in which they are searched
are completely configurable by the person setting up the webserver. As
visitors, we don't need to know what the default pages are; as designers
it's required information.


Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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