183340 - Evangelism - TechNote - Create files for users to fix common MIME-type misconfigurations (.htaccess, etc.)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, enhancement)

Description

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

After reading a comment on bug 95549, it occurred to me that we should 
help users fix MIME-type configurations on their servers. There's a 
widespread misbelief that one needs to be a server administrator to 
change MIME-type configurations; while it's true that that's the only way to 
make *global* changes, many servers are configured to allow users to 
change MIME-type mappings for files in their directory. I suggest that we 
create some files (.htaccess files for Apache; I'd imagine there's an 
equivalent for IIS) correcting some of the common MIME-type deficiencies 
(.css to text/css, .ico as image/x-icon, etc.) and make them available 
among the evangelism resources. This way, people can upload them to 
their page root and fix the problem immediately. (Obviously, we still want 
them to try to convince their server admins to fix the problem, particularly 
with something common like .css files, but this could make it easier for 
people using less common things like SVG and Flash).

Comment 1

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

very good idea.

Comment 2

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

Attachment: First draft of .htaccess file

Here's a first stab at adding some commonly misconfigured MIME-types in an
Apache .htaccess file.

Comment 3

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Attachment: a reformatted version with svg, xml additions.

what do you think of this look?

Comment 4

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

Looks fine to me.

Comment 5

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

need to post this as a resource

Comment 6

[Steve Chapel]

Here are some more very commonly misconfigured extensions & MIME types on Apache
servers:

wmv  video/x-ms-wmv
wma  audio/x-ms-wma
asx  video/x-ms-asf
asf  video/x-ms-asf
rar  application/x-rar-compressed
dmg  application/octet-stream

See http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22580 for an attempt to
fix this directly in Apache.

Comment 7

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: Cleaned up and some more extensions & MIME types added

Let's post this ASAP because Internet Explorer in Windows XP SP2 requires MIME
types to be set up (more) correctly. There are going to be thousands of
webmasters searching for this configuration info over the next several months.

Comment 8

[Phillip Stewart :P]

SVG should be (see bug 157514):

AddType image/svg+xml .svg
AddType image/svg+xml .svgz
AddEncoding x-gzip .svgz

.ico should be (see bug 252842):

AddType image/vnd.microsoft.icon .ico

Comment 9

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: .svgz added and .ico fixed

Comment 10

[Daniel Guido]

Attachment: added bittorrent, removed extra css

removed redundant css entry, added bittorrent

Comment 11

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: Fixed errors

In the second to last edit of the file, I somehow doubled the first four lines.
The last person to edit the file mostly fixed that problem and then messed up
the MIME type for the .ico extension. This is an attempt to fix all the
problems. I'm marking the previous attachments obsolete since this last version
the most definitive of the bunch, I hope!

Comment 12

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: New .htaccess file with .m3u added

Add .m3u extension with MIME type audio/x-mpegurl.

Comment 13

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: First Draft of MIME Type Technote

Comment 14

[Phillip Stewart :P]

(In reply to comment #13)
> First Draft of MIME Type Technote

The proper JavaScript MIME-type is application/x-javascript not application/js.

Comment 15

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: MIME Type Technote with fixed JavaScript MIME type

Comment 16

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: New .htaccess with more Microsoft multimedia file types

Comment 17

[Steve Chapel]

Attachment: New technote with new application/javascript MIME type

Comment 18

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

Steve, we should probably put these type documents on devmo.

Comment 19

[Steve Chapel]

I was actually just adding information to http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Properly_Configuring_Server_MIME_Types

I didn't add the How to Determine the MIME Type Sent by a Server section. Do you think I should?

Comment 20

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

sure.

Comment 21

[Steve Chapel]

Done.