They are predisposed to the idea that
this is “how files are processed” by
everything. In the case of files
transferred from a web server to a
browser, that is not correct. The
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
in RFC2616 (Hypertext Transfer
Protocol — HTTP/1.1), Section 7.2.1
Type, states:
Any HTTP/1.1 message containing an
entity-body SHOULD include a
Content-Type header field defining the
media type of that body. If and only
if the media type is not given by a
Content-Type field, the recipient MAY
attempt to guess the media type via
inspection of its content and/or the
name extension(s) of the URI used to
identify the resource.
In other words, how a file is
processed by a browser is determined
by the Content-Type field in the http
Response Header; the file suffix
should be ignored when there is a
Content-Type field.