Web: URL Schemes
A series of RFCs document URL schemes based on a variety of protocols. These include:
- RFC2255 (December 1996, The LDAP URL Format)
Enables web-style access to LDAP servers. For example, my entry in the Switchboard directory is accessible, from a browser, using the URL:
ldap://ldap.switchboard.com/cn%3DJon%20Udell%2C%20ou%3DZEDHINGL%2C%20o%3Dswitchboard%2C%20c%3DUS
- RFC2192 (September 1997, IMAP URL Scheme)
Defines an imap: URL scheme that supports web-style references to objects (e.g., messages) that live on IMAP servers.
- RFC2368 (July 1998, The mailto URL Scheme)
Extends the mailto: scheme defined in RFC1738, enabling the message composition and filtering techniques that we saw in Chapter 4 and Chapter 9.
- RFC2384 (August 1998, The POP URL Scheme)
According to RFC2384, “A POP3 mailbox (like an [IMAP4] mailbox) is a network resource, and URLs are a widely supported generalized representation of network resources. A means of specifying a POP3 mailbox as a URL will likely be useful in many programs and protocols.”
Finally, here’s a bit of web trivia. If you store the following text in a file:
<IMG SRC="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODdhMAAwAPAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAMAAw AAAC8IyPqcvt3wCcDkiLc7C0qwyGHhSWpjQu5yqmCYsapyuvUUlvONmOZtfzgFz ByTB10QgxOR0TqBQejhRNzOfkVJ+5YiUqrXF5Y5lKh/DeuNcP5yLWGsEbtLiOSp a/TPg7JpJHxyendzWTBfX0cxOnKPjgBzi4diinWGdkF8kjdfnycQZXZeYGejmJl ZeGl9i2icVqaNVailT6F5iJ90m6mvuTS4OK05M0vDk0Q4XUtwvKOzrcd3iq9uis F81M1OIcR7lEewwcLp7tuNNkM3uNna3F2JQFo97Vriy/Xl4/f1cf5VWzXyym7PH hhx4dbgYKAAA7" ...