[SoccerDude28]

Okay this dazzles and confuses me.

Check out this link: http://www.gamespot.com/reviews.html?platform=&category=Tactical+Shooters& type=reviews&mode=top&sort=post_date&sortdir=asc
Nothing fancy here just a gamespot url with a query string to get the reviews based on some criteria. What confuses me is that the URL is reviews.html <- an html file. Isn't an HTML file supposed to be static data? To my knowledge dynamic data comes in the form of a link with a .jsp or .php or servlet/blah or .asp or .aspx but what about this dynamic content with an html extension. Any ideas?

[jjacob]

Well looking at the page's source it's filled with javascript layers, and that's definately not exclusive to jsp extensions, html can apparently be just as dynamic. Not an expert by far, but this isn't *that* unusual is it?

[Phantom]

I've been wondering myself too.

It's quite possible to have .html pages parsed as php, it's just a server-side setting, but I guess that's not what gamespot does. I think it's indeed some nasty Javascript coding, I have seen it on other websites a couple of times too.

It's quite possible to create a dynamic webpage just by using javascript, but that method is just extremely outdated. I assume Gamespot is still using it because of legacy reasons.

[Huz]

Originally Posted by Phantom

It's quite possible to have .html pages parsed as php

This is 10000000000000% more likely than your other explanation - it'll be PHP parsed server-side.

They are probably using a .html extension in place of .php for two reasons:
1) The URL was reviews.html before they had any kind of dynamic system and don't want to lose any old links lying around (go to reviews.html without any parameters and you get the full index).
2) Rumour has it that search engines rate .html pages more highly than dynamic ones, purely because their content is more stable.

FWIW, the Gamespot server has PHP 4 installed.

[tabacco]

Originally Posted by Huz

This is 10000000000000% more likely than your other explanation - it'll be PHP parsed server-side.

They are probably using a .html extension in place of .php for two reasons:
1) The URL was reviews.html before they had any kind of dynamic system and don't want to lose any old links lying around (go to reviews.html without any parameters and you get the full index).
2) Rumour has it that search engines rate .html pages more highly than dynamic ones, purely because their content is more stable.

FWIW, the Gamespot server has PHP 4 installed.

http://arstechnica.com/index.ars <-- extension to BLOW YOUR MIND!

(And yeah, with Apache you can AddHandler php onto just about any extension you care to)