The frivolous side:
The other day I wanted to put a particular page on the iPad's desktop so I wouldn't have to keep going through Safari. I clicked the requisite buttons... and at the place where it's supposed to give a preview of the apple-touch-icon it instead showed a perfectly plain black box. This was very jazzy looking and might make a nifty favicon for a particular type of site-- but it does not happen to be mine.
Detour to apple dot com to re-read all instructions. Was I supposed to do something in the icon editor? Nope. Was I supposed to use the "times" sign rather than the letter x in the name? Nope. Will it help to add one at the 72x72 size? Nope.
Further detour to raw logs to confirm that my iPad has been there, requesting the apple-touch-icon. Slight delay as I note that for this purpose, the user-agent switches from ordinary iPad to something containing the word "Darwin".
Longer delay as I realize that I don't
have the specific file the iPad asked for (there are potentially eight different apple-touch-icons, of which I currently have four), so why is it showing up as a 200, and with a filesize more in keeping with a favicon?
Still longer delay as the word "Darwin" causes brain synapses to start firing, leading to a final detour to htaccess containing lines (here edited for posting purposes)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} iP([oa]d|hone)|Darwin
<snip>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^-?$
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png) /pictures/smallgifs/onedot.gif [L]
D'oh, hand-forehead-slap, boinggggg.
The rule was put in place for image searches; it's the mobile-device version of my /blank.html rewrite.
The apple-touch-icon, unlike the favicon, uses the same .png extension as an ordinary image file. I HAVE BEEN BLOCKING MYSELF. Also anyone else with a mobile device, but they may not have noticed.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !apple-touch-icon
All is well.
Whew.
The not-so-frivolous side:
(a) People who take their websites seriously have all kinds of blocks: user-agents, known proxies, suspicious referers...
(b) People who take their privacy seriously have all kinds of browser restrictions: no cookies, no scripting, no referer, obfuscated UA, connect via a proxy...
So the question arises. If you did not poke a hole for yourself, would you be able to get into your own site?
"I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me for a member."
