Data URI scheme: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:25, 22 March 2006

Revision as of 22:12, 22 March 2006

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The '''data: URI scheme''', as defined by [[IETF]] standard RFC 2397, is a [[URI scheme]] that allows inclusion of small data items inline, as if they were being referenced in an external resource. They tend to be far simpler than alternative inclusion methods, such as [[MIME]] with <tt>cid:</tt> or <tt>mid:</tt>. According to the wording in the RFC, <tt>data:</tt> URIs are in fact URLs ([[Uniform Resource Locator]]s), although they do not actually locate anything.

The scheme is currently supported by [[Mozilla Application Suite|Mozilla]] (and its derivatives, such as [[Mozilla Firefox|Firefox]]), [[Opera (web browser)|Opera]], [[Safari (web browser)|Safari]] and [[Konqueror]]. [[Microsoft]]'s [[Internet Explorer]], as of version 67, does not support <tt>data:</tt> URIs. Early versions of [[Internet Explorer]] treated unrecognised <tt>[[about: URI scheme|about:]]</tt> URIs as HTML source, so something like <code><nowiki>about:<b>bold</b></nowiki></code> in these versions was broadly equivalent to <code><nowiki>data:text/html,<b>bold</b></nowiki></code> in browsers that support <tt>data:</tt> URIs

===Advantages===