This document answers questions asked frequently by web authors. While its focus is on HTML-related questions, this FAQ also answers some questions related to CSS, HTTP, JavaScript, server configuration, etc.
This document is maintained by Darin McGrew <darin@htmlhelp.com> of the Web Design Group, and is posted regularly to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html. It was last updated on October 20, 2001.
The following questions have moved to another section of the FAQ.
Once the file is uploaded to the server, you need only use an anchor reference tag to link to it. An example would be:
<a href="../files/foo.zip">Download Foo Now! (100kb ZIP)</a>
It is possible that the server might need to be configured for some different file types. (See the next Q&A.)
If you are trying to link to a particular type of file and it is not returning your desired response, chances are that the server needs to have the type configured. Talk to your system administrator about getting them to add the content type. Here is a list of common types that often need configuring:
| Content Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Application/msword | Microsoft Word Document |
| application/octet-stream | Unclassified binary data (often used for compressed file or executable) |
| application/pdf | PDF Document |
| application/wordperfect6.0 | WordPerfect 6.0 Document |
| application/zip | ZIP archive |
| audio/x-wav | WAV audio format |
| audio/midi | MIDI audio format |
| audio/x-pn-realaudio | RealAudio |
| image/gif | GIF image format |
| image/jpeg | JPEG image format |
| image/png | PNG image format |
| text/css | CSS style sheet |
| text/html | HTML document |
| text/plain | Plain text |
| video/mpeg | MPEG video format |
| video/quicktime | QuickTime video format |
| video/x-msvideo | AVI video format |
Another method of ensuring that your file is properly sent to the client is to compress it into a standard compression format. Virtually all servers are set to handle the .zip extension and it is widely recognized by users.
Some servers (NCSA, Apache, and others) can be configured to support user-configured content types. Details are server dependent, so consult your server admin or documentation.
Note that Internet Explorer incorrectly ignores server-provided MIME types, so it sometimes "does the right thing" when the server is misconfigured. Other browsers correctly heed the server-provided MIME types, so they will reveal server misconfigurations.
You can't do any of these things reliably, because the Web doesn't work that way. See <URL:http://www.dantobias.com/webtips/force.html>.
When the browser requests a document (hypertext, image, audio, multimedia, etc.), the server tells the browser what type of file it is. The server should be configured to identify a document's media type properly, as described in the answer to the previous question.
The browser then decides what to do with it. Different browsers are able to and are configured to display different types of documents themselves. Browsers are usually configured to handle other file types by using appropriate helper applications or by offering to save the document to the filesystem.
RFC 2183 describes the Content-disposition header, which can be used to suggest how the browser should handle documents. The value "inline" suggests that the document should be displayed automatically, and the value "attachment" suggests that the user should prompted before the document is displayed (or saved). Note that this mechanism has significant security implications, which are described in the RFC.
Most browsers allow users to download to disk if they want to. If the file must be saved to disk, if there is absolutely no other way to handle it, then the MIME type could be "application/octet-stream". However, this essentially says, "I can't or won't tell you what this is." Furthermore, the MIME type "application/octet-stream" provokes incorrect behavior in MSIE's HTTP implementation. A better alternative would be a custom MIME type like "application/x-some-explanation", which avoids these problems.
Most browsers support the EMBED element for this, provided that the user has a suitable plug-in for the sound file. You can reach a slightly wider audience if you use BGSOUND as well. To avoid problems with browsers that support both, place the BGSOUND in a NOEMBED container:
<EMBED SRC="your_sound_file" HIDDEN=true AUTOSTART=true>
<NOEMBED><BGSOUND SRC="your_sound_file"></NOEMBED>
For more on the EMBED element, see <URL:http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/tags14.htm#1286379>. For more on the BGSOUND element, see <URL:http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/objects/bgsound.asp>. Note that these elements are proprietary and not in any HTML standard. (The HTML standard way of doing this is not well supported.)
Be aware that some users find it annoying for music to automatically start playing. They may not have the volume set properly on their speakers, or they may be listening to something else. As a courtesy to your users, you may prefer to offer the sound file as a link:
<A HREF="your_sound_file">Listen to my sound! (5 kB MIDI)</A>
Many browsers have a "Save As..." function that allows you to specify plain text as the output format. Another approach is to select all the text, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into an editor.
Lynx users can use "lynx -dump http://..." on the command line to print to file and append a list of referenced URLs as footnotes. If you want the output file without the footnotes, use the "p" command to "print" to a text file.
Some HTML authoring tools have an option to strip all HTML as well. Two programs of note are
If you are looking for another method (in other words you want to make things more difficult on yourself), you can obtain programs which will strip away all HTML markup from a document. Try doing a search at <URL:http://www.altavista.com/> for the phrase "HTML stripper".
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