Alex Rivera | Logout

Can I change all my http:// links to just //?

Asked 2011-01-28T18:29:25.810
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Dave Ward says,

It’s not exactly light reading, but section 4.2 of RFC 3986 provides for fully qualified URLs that omit protocol (the HTTP or HTTPS) altogether. When a URL’s protocol is omitted, the browser uses the underlying document’s protocol instead.

Put simply, these “protocol-less” URLs allow a reference like this to work in every browser you’ll try it in:

//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js

It looks strange at first, but this “protocol-less” URL is the best way to reference third party content that’s available via both HTTP and HTTPS.

This would certainly solve a bunch of mixed-content errors we're seeing on HTTP pages -- assuming that our assets are available via both HTTP and HTTPS.

Is this completely cross-browser compatible? Are there any other caveats?

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If you use protocol-less URLs to load stylesheets, IE 7 & 8 will download them twice: http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2010/02/10/5a-missing-schema-double-download/

So, this is to be avoided for CSS if you like good performance.

answered 2011-06-16T11:23:44.810

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