Re: My Very Strange Webhost, SBI! -- Opinions, Please

On May 14, 3:05 pm, Mark Goodge <use...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>
>
> I think that the OP means "relative to the do***ent root" when he says
> "absolute" - that is, an absolute path as far as the browser is
> concerned (starting with a "/").

Hey, I'm just taking my cue from SBI! tech sup****t, which is just
passing along the message from their "programmers" -- they're the ones
calling it an absolute file path name format.  I've adopted the label
on the assumption that they know what they're talking about.

> In this context, "relative" is
> usually taken to mean "relative to the current page URL".

Yeah, it seems that "http://www.my-website.com"
is the "root" and an
absolute path for a file would be "http://www.my-website.com/files/
file.doc" as opposed to "files/file.doc" -- which is relative format,
relative to the do***ent calling for the file.

> In this
> context, the first and last of your examples are "absolute" to the
> browser, as they will work from any page on his site no matter what
> its location in the URL structure. The middle two, by contrast, will
> only work if the page is in the do***ent root itself:
>
> http://www.ego-management.org/image-files/awww4.png
> image-files/awww4.png
> ./image-files/awww4.png
> /image-files/awww4.png

Sorry, can't follow along...all I know is that "absolute" is like
telling someone the full mailing address of a geographical location,
while "relative" is like telling someone "it's down the block on the
corner."

> If that is the case then that also explains his problem. If you're
> using an online CMS - particularly a javascript-based WYSIWYG CMS -
> then you need to make your image paths absolute URLs (ie, relative to
> the do***ent root), as the relative path from the CMS is usually
> different to the relative path from the public location of the page.

But why only the first src attribute; how come the other two can
remain relative, as I'd had them originally??

> If you use a relative URL when creating pages in an online CMS, then
> either the page will work in the CMS but not in the main site, or work
> in the main site but not the CMS. And that's not a "bug" in the CMS,
> it's a normal consequence of using one.

Seems to be a "bug" in the same way Y2K was a bug -- not accounting
for the way people actually do things.  I don't know anything about
CMS (only found out about it in this thread!), but surely software
designed to manage content shouldn't require that content to deviate
from standard practices -- and relative path format is standard
practice for addressing a file that's in the same domain!

> Mark
> --
> Miscellaneous remarks athttp://Mark.Goodge.co.uk
> "All this talk of getting old, it's getting me down my love"