What do you think, is this gonna require a FAQ entry?
Well, I got tired of hearing "What is the difference between .htm and .html?" So I made this page to show it doesn't really matter what the filename extension is. The server, and the user agent (browser) to a lesser extent, decide what to do with the file. The difference between .htm and .html is ultimately the letter l. A server and browser operating over HTTP don't care how many letters are in the file extension.
Feel free to use whichever you want. But using .htm might make you look like a dork since the file has HTML in it not HTM.
The Content-type Saga by the late A.J. Flavell elaborates on a related topic that may effect how .rob is handled in a misbehaving user agent, e.g. Micro$oft IE.
This is applicable to Apache 1.3+ as my host has it configured, the specific method on your server may differ. Of course you probably want to use something other than .rob :-)
In .htaccess type the following AddType text/html .rob
Additionally I enabled XBitHack to more easily parse this file for SSI.
These links point to the current documentation (Apache 2.2 as of this writing). Your version may differ so be sure you're reading the right manual.
This article may be extended to answer "What's the difference between .html and .shtml?"
While traditionally .shtml means sever-parsed HTML it depends entirely on how the server is configured. In this traditional case, all files ending in .shtml will get parsed for SSI. But as the above note about XBitHack should make obvious, .shtml is no more special than .htm. The server can be configured to parse any file extension. Or take the hint from the execute bits as XBitHack does.
