On 5/25/08, Gerhard Fiedler <lists@connectionbrazil.com> wrote:
> FWIW, IE decodes the image URLs correctly and displays the images.

FWIW IE does NOT follow the RFC for URL encoding, and that means that
when I make a webpage that has windows users copy path information
from their file system into a text box on a webpage and post that to
my website for various reasons then I have to work around this BUG
that IE continues to use to support web developers that don't follow
internet standards.  I further can't use the standard javascript
encode routine to alter the URL - IE just decodes it, so I have to
write and debug a new routine that enables a custom encoding (which
further must fit within the correct URL encoding, meaning it's much
stricter) and then use the reverse on the other end.

What IE has done, essentially, is ELIMINATED the use of the \ for
anything other than a bad path delimiter - they've dropped a character
(for which there is a completely valid encoding - %5C - from the
character set.

How is that in any way acceptable?

It also means new developers get to work around this BUG and waste
time while using a perfectly good character:
http://silverlight.net/forums/t/16247.aspx
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/html_no18.htm
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/revsol.html

There are times when one wants to pass a path to the webserver as a
parameter for a script.  For readability '\' is a perfect answer - '/'
isn't allowed except as a path, and no other character conveys to the
user what the parameter is about as well.  Regardless of how the
developer wants to use it, it shouldn't be artificially restricted
because it's what windows systems use as a path delimiter - take your
MS specific standards out of my web standards, please.

What IE SHOULD be doing is converting any "\" to %5C before sending it
to the webserver, and not modifying any "%5C" found in the URL.

If the web developer insists on using non standard UNIFORM RESOURCE
LOCATOR techniques, then they should deal with the conversion on their
end, not force clients to adopt their personal style.

Trying the correct URL first, and only on error attempting another hit
would only increase the load on servers and make it take longer to get
the content - slowing down the site.

In other words, covering up a problem caused by someone not following
standards degrades the experience for everyone.

I hope this is still OK for EE - I use backslashes in my embedded HTTP
clients, and can't test the server applications from IE.

-Adam

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