Re: filename.gif or filename.gif.jpg?


Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit


Jonathan N. Little wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

The file is named ".gif" but it is really a ".jpeg" file.
http://www.thinkingrock.com.au/helpmanual/images/thought16.gif

JPEG Image
0.43 KB (445 bytes)
15px × 15px

Several of the others are also misnamed JPEGs. Use Firefox's "Page
Information" tool, Media tab, to see what type they really are.
Right-click > Properties shows the same in my Firefox,

What is important to realize is that the file extension as the
determination of file type is a "Windows" thing. Other OSs and with
webservers it is not used. With the webserver it is the content type in
the header that is important. The filename could be "anything", literally

Right. I should have fired up my Linux box and tried that. Firefox
looking and feeling pretty much the same on both platforms sometimes
makes me forget how different the underlying OSs are. (Note to
self: next time, smoke the Crack *after* posting to Usenet...) :)

There might be an interesting use for this. If you rename the jpeg
files on your web site from .jpeg / .jpg to .gif and make the links
match, Windows users will not be able to us Save As --> Save Entire
Webpage to download all the images on the page at once. This will
make is a bit harder for the casual thief to steal your webpage
and put up a copy of your content on his site.

Hmmm. If Windows silently renames such a file from filename.gif
to filename.gif.jpg, what happens if there is another file, also
a Jpeg, that is named filename.gif.jpg? Will it trigger the usual
Windows "Copy Of filename.ext" rename behavior. put up an error
box asking you whether to overwrite, or will it silently overwrite?
I will try some tests this weekend and see if any other useful
behavior occurs. This, BTW, is a good example of *why* the old
CP/M MS-DOS "extension determines filetype" behavior was such a
bad idea. If Microsoft had adopted the UNIX convention instead,
this sort of thing wouldn't happen.


--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

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