HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
n
Watch out for filename restrictions
—If your server is a PC and you've been writ-
ing your files on some other system, you might have to rename your files and the
links to them to follow the correct file naming conventions. (Moving files you've
created on a PC to some other system usually isn't a problem.)
Also, watch out if you're moving files from a Macintosh to other systems. Make
sure that your filenames don't have spaces or other funny characters in them. Keep
your filenames as short as possible, use only letters and numbers, and you'll be
fine.
n
Watch out for uppercase or lowercase sensitivity
—Filenames on computers run-
ning Microsoft Windows are not case-sensitive. On UNIX and Mac OS X systems,
they are. If you develop your pages on a computer running Windows and publish
them on a server that has case-sensitive filenames, you must make sure that you
have entered the URLs in your links properly. If you're linking to a file named
About.html
, on your computer running Windows,
about.html
would work, but on
a UNIX server it would not.
n
Be aware of carriage returns and line feeds
—Different systems use different
methods for ending a line. The Macintosh uses carriage returns, UNIX uses line
feeds, and DOS uses both. When you move files from one system to another, most
of the time the end-of-line characters will be converted appropriately, but some-
times they won't. The characters that aren't converted can cause your file to come
out double spaced or all on a single line when it's moved to another system.
Most of the time, this failure to convert doesn't matter because browsers ignore
spurious returns or line feeds in your HTML files. The existence or absence of
either one isn't terribly important. However, it might be an issue in sections of text
that you've marked up with
<pre>
; you might find that your well-formatted text
that worked so well on one platform doesn't come out that way after it's been
moved.
If you do have end-of-line problems, you have two options. Many text editors
enable you to save ASCII files in a format for another platform. If you know the
platform to which you're moving, you can prepare your files for that platform
before moving them.
Uploading Your Files
In the preceding list of tips about moving files, I mentioned FTP. FTP, short for File
Transfer Protocol, is one of the ways to move files from your local computer to the
server where they will be published, or to download them so that you can work on them,
for that matter. Some other protocols that can be used to transfer files include SFTP
(secure FTP), and SCP (secure copy). They all work a bit differently; the most important
difference is that SCP and SFTP are encrypted, whereas FTP is not.
20
