Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
>> Never heard that putting '.html' is for a good spirit.
>> In my view, when URL terminates with .html extension it's shows that
>> current page are plain file (with .html extension), and .php, .jsp are
>> content generated by corresponding engine.
> 
> Your view is a webserver's view, not a user's view.

Also look at the history of the web and especially MIME content types 
like 'text/html' etc. At the beginning there was only static web serving 
and (as is usual on our computers even now), a file extension determined 
  a format of the file's content. Here lays the origin of the .html 
extension.

It is true that with MIME content types it seems that there is no more 
need for URL extensions, but that's true for web browser and not for 
users, as Paolo pointed out.

> Most sites in existence have a dynamic part (for example the navigation) 
> in the URL; but a site that is 99% static and yet shows what engine is 
> used for that 1%, is a bad site IMNSHO.  A user couldn't care less about 
> what engine is used.  Though I must say that most users are probably 
> ambivalent about having .html or not having it.

Well, we were forced to become ambivalent .. But now this habbit goes 
just too far. Not having an extension at all is not nice to me because I 
don't know what to expect behind that link. There is no user feedback 
and such feedback is one of postulates of good, friendly user interface.

But what user really don't care is if a page is static or dynamic. 
That's why I'm calling such URLs as with "marketing" extensions.

> Maybe you would both agree on
> 
> http://squeak.aidaweb.si:8000/class/AidaBrowserMethod/method/loop:/
> http://squeak.aidaweb.si:8000/class/AidaBrowserMethod/method/loop:/fileout.st 
> 
> The former for the doc, the second for the source?

Well, first could be used for returning a collection of resources (in 
REST spirit) but if a HTML page is returned, it should better stay 
.html, because it is a HTML representation of a "collection" of methods.

Janko


-- 
Janko Mivšek
AIDA/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si