RE: PBeM FT/EFSB Vector movement (Excel)

On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Tim Jones wrote:

> If you use http: then any browser will download it as text if it
thinks it is
> hypertext use ftp: or file: in the URL.

Erm, no... the protocol part of the URL is actually there for a reason: 
to define transmission protocol. You can't merrily put anything you like

there (even though NotScape would probably like you to think so).

1) HTML link is simply a reference to another document. It does *not*
contain
information what to do with that other document, only how to get it.

2) The browser decides what to do with the document based on the MIME 
type. When it can not get MIME type from the server (e.g. ftp -links),
it makes an educated guess.

3) How does the server know what the MIME type is? You guessed it, it
*guesses*, usually based on filename extension. The default for
practically all httpd servers is "text/html" or "text/plain". This is a
configurable parameter called MIME Mapping in your server, but you need
rights to reconfigure your entire server (i.e. your ISP probably won't 
let you do it). 

4) Even with a correctly supplied MIME type, it is *entirely* up to
the browser/user what it/he wants to do with a file of that type.

So, the correct thing to do is to reconfigure the MIME Mapping to 
identify an Excel file as an Excel file. Short of that, you can also
hope 
that more people would learn to use their right mouse button...

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