Generate Web URL

[wakewatcher]

Looks like your "Generate Web URL" is now broke. (It also looks like it has regressed style wise as well.) Anyway it doesn't (on http anyway) it doesn't capture it correctly.

It comes up for example as:

http://Skyline.s3.amazonaws.com/Game/_08-Skyline.html

instead of the correct:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/Skyline/Game/_08-Skyline.html

[saurabh]

Using bucket name as host name is the recommended way going forward (when you use bucket explorer). Trust me on this recommendation for now and I will explain more in about a month. So, its a good idea to use lower case letters in bucket names. We will be adding a message when creating a bucket to keep the name in lower case. If you have not yet picked the lower case named for your buckets, do them now, because someone else can create buckets with same name if they use lower case letters.

Having said that, we should have preserved the old style for backward compatibility when bucket names contain upper case letters or underscores. Thanks for pointing it out.

Saurabh

[wakewatcher]

I'm not following. What difference should it make as you can make the converse argument as well? (Actually I'm not interested in the debate but are you telling me that if you choose a bucket with a Capital letter you choose to position it differently in the URL string?

[saurabh]

Lets use the example of october exe, which is in a bucket called downloads.bucketexplorer.com (this is the bucket name).

We can access it in three different ways:

http://downloads.bucketexplorer.com/win ... 0.27.0.exe

OR

http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.bucke ... 0.27.0.exe

OR

http://downloads.bucketexplorer.com.s3. ... 0.27.0.exe

Here downloads.bucketexplorer.com is the bucket name and win/Bucket-Explorer-Self-Extractor-2007.10.27.0.exe is the file name.

So, you can use the bucket name as a "host" within s3.amazonaws.com subdomain or use bucketname as a "diectory" within s3.amazonaws.com host.

bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com (bucket as a host)
s3.amazonaws.com/bucketname (bucket as a directory).

We have changed Bucket Explorer to generate URLs using bucket as host instead of bucket as a directory. This will be the new default behaviour. I can explain in a month that why do we think this should be the "default" way.

When you use bucket name as "host", it cannot contain an uppercase letter or underscores, which are perfectly valid & legal when you use bucket name as a directory. So, we need to add backward compatibility to generate URLs in old format if the bucket already has upper case or underscores.

EDIT: - This rule that a host name cannot be upper case or underscore is not our rule. This applies globally on internet for any host name.

Thanks
Saurabh

[Guest]

Thanks for the explanation. I'll look forward to understanding the rationale when you deliver it. Now if only Amazon would let you rename buckets!!!

[wakewatcher]

Thanks for the explanation. I'll look forward to understanding the rationale when you deliver it. Now if only Amazon would let you rename buckets!!!

Whoops. Forgot to log in for that reply. On the subject of file explorer this really is a nice step forward but I would really like to be able to do 'normal' file explorer things like launch editors and rename files. Also it would be nice to be able to use standard things like the Delete Key when manipulating S3 Objects on the right side.