Web Design Discussion - .HTM or .HTML

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.HTM or .HTML

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Forum Name: Web Design Discussion
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Topic: .HTM or .HTML

Posted By: zMaestro
Subject: .HTM or .HTML
Date Posted: 06 August 2003 at 12:57pm

i wanted to share this question:

Is there any difference between naming a file .htm or .html?

and if they are exactly the same why are they both exists, especially the 4 extension letters .html?

Replies:

Posted By: michael
Date Posted: 06 August 2003 at 1:15pm

There is no difference, possibly one was tried to be introduced with a new version of HTML. Use whatever you prefer.

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Posted By: eksimba
Date Posted: 06 August 2003 at 2:00pm

I think that .html came first, and was used by unix-based servers of the time. The letters were simply representative of the acronym for Hyper-Text Markup Language. With the proliferation of DOS and Windows-based servers, which use three letter filename suffixes, .html was shortened to .htm, which then became popular. Today there is no functional difference between the two.

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 06 August 2003 at 2:02pm

I was lead to believe that is was to do with Unix OS's using an extension with 4 characters (html) and Windows 3.1 needing to use 3 character extenstions (htm). As most extensions on Windows still use 3 characters I tend to use .htm

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Posted By: hpnadig
Date Posted: 13 August 2003 at 12:55pm

Well I donot prefer .htm 'cos I design in Linux..

But is that the only difference btn them? .. I wonder...

Posted By: Bunce
Date Posted: 13 August 2003 at 4:41pm

As long as the browser / web server can identify and process them, it doesn't matter what extension you give it.

Cheers,
Andrew

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Posted By: hpnadig
Date Posted: 14 August 2003 at 7:10am

yeah! thaz right...

Posted By: KCWebMonkey
Date Posted: 14 August 2003 at 6:53pm

Found this on experts-exchange.com:

"The difference is that htm is from the old DOS eight.three naming conventions. No file name could be longer than eight characters and no extension could be more than three characters. Nowdays, the only real difference is that some servers require the index page of a site to be index.html. Otherwise they are interchangeable. Similar to .jpg and.jpeg. Of course if you are referencing a URL, it is necessary to use the right one for that particular page. "

Posted By: Bluefrog
Date Posted: 19 August 2003 at 8:57am

Right right... but to go a step further, NO extension actually holds any meaning whatsoever. They are only used to identify files for applications to be associated with them. Once upon a time, we used to name files anything we wanted because we had so little storage space that it was easy to keep track of each of our files and we only had a handful of applications anyways...

Well... that's pretty close to true... For an example, take a PDF file - any one will do - rename it from myFile.PDF to myFile.fart. Open Acrobat and then click open. Browse to the file and open it. It will display correctly. You can even go so far as to rename it with a *.wetfart extension... and it won't even get messy at that point :)

Posted By: hotconcrete
Date Posted: 19 August 2003 at 5:13pm

i recall having problems with the .jpeg extension, as in not being able to reference those images correctly through some servers... but i guess that's the server's fault

Posted By: KCWebMonkey
Date Posted: 20 August 2003 at 10:58am

try renaming to .jpg