Matthew's Journal

Looking at the suggestion, I'm a little confused about why you'd want to use that little of a relative URI: what's the advantage?

Relative URIs which keep the same host name and path prefix ("../styles/foo.css" and "../images/bar.jpeg" etc) are obviously practically useful because they enable you to transplant an entire web site into a different directory or a different host, and have all the interlinks Just Work with no annoying editing required. Fair enough. But that kind tend not to be useful on LJ because there aren't many URLs that you can reliably access relative to a post or comment, since that post/comment can show up in lots of different contexts such as other people's friends pages.

I don't understand the practical use of a relative URI which keeps only the protocol and changes everything else. Even if the entire LJ site were moved over to a different protocol - perhaps HTTPS - there still wouldn't be much use for such relative URIs, since no other hostname would have moved its content over simultaneously, surely?

Is this a question of pedantic standards compliance, or is there an actual use for it that I've missed out? You mention in the suggestions community that you might want to make a mirror of your LJ available via gopher, but I have a hard time believing that you have a genuine desire to do this :-)