🚀 go-pugleaf

[cross posted to more relevent newsgroup. Followups set]

In article <822944330snz@phesk.demon.co.uk> Peter Hesketh <pbh@phesk.demon.co.uk> writes:
> In article <822916275snz@kriv.demon.co.uk>
>            Paul@kriv.demon.co.uk "Paul Kriwaczek" writes:
> > Thanks for the suggestion, Peter. But of course ftp is not the problem.
> > What does one do about for example - I choose an address at random -
> > http://www.smartlink.net/~deej7/crusade.zip ?
> 
> Paul:  Is that a legal URL?  The more I learn about www the more I realise 

yes, it is legal.

> that I know less and less!  The way I _thought_ I understood it was
> that in a case like your example, http would transfer the file and
> try to interpret it as html, and fail.  The way I understood the
> accessibility of such files was

that was the case in version 0.9 of the HTTP protocol.

Now, however, when your browser requests the file it gets informed of
the media-type (formerly known as the mime-type). The server 'knows'
what sort of files it has, a ZIP file would probably be something like
'application/x-zip'. Your browser can be instructed what to do with
each type, and will typically offer you the option of saving to disk
if it doesn't recognise it.

Follow-ups to demon.ip.www.

James.