Basic HTML - does relative path to a sub-folder (using the directory name) work on a desktop?

I am doing some basic HTML exercises on a Mac OS 10.6.6.

Say I am here:

rootfolder/index.html

and I want to go here:

rootfolder/subfolder/index.html

I understand I can use the relative path to make a link:

<a href="subfolder/index.html">link to subfolder</a>

^ this works for me in my browser.

And if I wanted to 开发者_如何学Pythonshorten the href, I could just do this:

<a href="subfolder/">link to subfolder</a>

When I click the short version in my browser, the link takes me to the folder on my desktop (not to the page in my browser)

I'm wondering, do the files need to be in a web host environment for the short version to work in a browser?

When /bob/ => /bob/index.html works, it is generally because the server has listed it as its directory index, e.g. with Apache...

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

...meaning in the request of a folder, it will first look up to see if an index.html or index.php exists (in that order).

So if you are running it from the folders of your local filesytem (i.e. on the file: protocol), it has no server and does not know that a blank directory should request index.html.

The serving of index.html (or index.cgi or default.asp or whatever) when requesting a url that points to a directory is done by the server, not the browser. It is usually done as a result of configuration setting.

It's neither a property of HTML nor a property of urls.

If your browser doesn't serve index.html — and I don't know any that do — then you've answered your own question.

Mac OS comes with Apache (the most commonly-used open-source web server) pre-installed. You can set it up by going to System Preferences, choosing the "Sharing" preference pane, and then checking the box to turn on Personal Web Sharing.

Once you've turned on Personal Web Sharing, http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/ will point to the Sites directory in your user's folder in Mac OS (i.e., /Users/yourusername/Sites/). With Apache running, if you go to http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/subfolder/, it will in fact serve up /Users/yourusername/Sites/subfolder/index.html if there is an index.html file in that subfolder.

Without turning on Personal Web Sharing, though, there is no server running, and so your browser is really just directly accessing your computer's filesystem. As a result, when you ask for a folder, it literally returns you that folder, whereas Apache server knows the convention that /subfolder/ is really a request for /subfolder/index.html and will re-direct you accordingly.

The default page setting/redirection works only on web servers. The browser do not have intelligence(?) for such redirection. So the second option will not work.