Friendly URLs/ Cruft Free URLs

[jackdack]

Friendly URLs/ Cruft Free URLs whatever you call them. I'm talking about the url displaying files with no extension.

ie. by configuring your server
[server.com...]
becomes
[server.com...]

The concept seems great, I heard rumour Microsoft use on some pages, but I don't know of many people using them, and I wonder why.

Do you have any experience with Friendly URLs/ Cruft Free URLs
I'd like to use them but I want to hear whether there's disadvantages of using them.

Thank you

[John Carpenter]

I heard rumour Microsoft use on some pages

Google uses pages without file extensions as well. A lot of their pages are still .html and .py though.

I'd like to use them but I want to hear whether there's disadvantages of using them.

I don't like the fact that they are easily confused with folders. The advantage, however, is that you can easily switch from say php to python, etc. and SEs will not have to reindex your site.

[jackdack]

thanks for the reply.
While my host will support no extension, I'm now having trouble using files with no extesion in DreamWeaver. I need the files to showup the same way an html or php file would. Currently it won't allow me to go to Design view. Do you know of a work around?

I searched Macromedia support & forum to no avail, it seems many people are using no extension but no explanation as to how. Thank you

[txbakers]

A webpage is a file. A file has an extension, whether php, htm, html, asp or txt.

The web server is configured to read that extension and turn it into a web page.

You can configure the webserver to hide the extension and still display the page.

Look up Rewriting URLs or for IIS: ISAPI Rewrite.

[moon2005]

I WANT TO know, what file-type a URL has, because I probably won't download a .exe file. .jpg or anything else which can't contain a virus is no problem.