HTML quick question, I'm sure the answer is so simple... Options

[nicole]

I have a website
www.elusion.ca
and there is an address off the site that I don't want to have a link to. So basically I just want to be able to type in the address...
Example:

http://elusion.ca/individual_solutions.html

is there any way to have it so I don't need to type in the html at the end???
When I type in the address without the html attached to the end then I get an error "Page not found" or something... Is it possible to do that? just type in

www.elusion.ca/individual_solutions

Thank you so much,
Nicole - very confused

[dharma]

well, if there exist a file called "individual_solutions.html"
and dont exist a file called "individual_solutions"
than You will get error allways when you write only "individual_solutions"
without the ".html" on the end...

its the same like when you call a phone number which dont exist...
you have no one to talk to...

(if i understood your questi well...)

[Darin McGrew]

Content negotiation can be used for this. See http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI#remove

The short version is that the user agent requests /individual_solutions and the server looks to see which versions of /individual_solutions are available and which best matches the content types the user agent says it will accept. This could be used to send PNG images to browsers that say they support them, while sending GIF images to other browsers. It just happens that in this case, there is only one version, but that really doesn't matter.

[Brian Chandler]

Content negotiation can be used for this. See http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI#remove

The short version is that the user agent requests /individual_solutions and the server looks to see which versions of /individual_solutions are available and which best matches the content types the user agent says it will accept. This could be used to send PNG images to browsers that say they support them, while sending GIF images to other browsers. It just happens that in this case, there is only one version, but that really doesn't matter.

I suppose this will work, but what's the point? Content negotiation is about the server and browser discussing which data type is best - in this case there is only one, so the "discussion" will look a bit like something from Monty Python. Server: Ah, would you like html Sir? Diner: Uh, well what else have you got? Server: Uh, well, we have html, or we have html, or there's html. Diner: Oh, right... html! Yes, I'll have that.

UIMM, you can simply put the file individual_solutions on the server, and fiddle with Apache to give it the right MIME type, or use the rewrite stuff to send the actual .html file. I can't imagine what the object of this all is - the OP wants not to have a link to this page (easily done); if the idea is just to make less typing, why not use a shorter name, like solns.html ?

[Peter1968]

That URL at the W3C doesn't really explain how it's done, just a lot of chatter.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/content-negotiation.html explains how content negotiation is done, the apache way.

[Christian J]

If it's just about a single page, the simplest should be to link to the directory http://elusion.ca/individual_solutions/
(which will usually return the default file "index.html"), and rename the file "individual_solutions.html" to "index.html". But for lots of pages, making a separate directory for each one seems less practical.

[Darin McGrew]

I suppose this will work, but what's the point?

The main point seems to be to keep "implementation details" out of the URL. So the server might have example.html or example.cgi or example.php or example.xyzzy, but the browser doesn't care. The browser requests example and gets an appropriate response. And the bookmarked URL still works in 5 years after you've migrated the site to some other back-end technology.

Or you can use example.html, and configure your server to process example.html as a CGI program, PHP program, or whatever else, and get the same benefit as far as having a stable URL goes.