Data URIs

By  on  

We're all familiar with traditional URI protocols like https, http, ftp, and file, but data URIs have become a large part of our online strategy. We can use them to display images, the Mac camera and webcams, and more. But what if we simply want to use a data URI to convey basic data?

Typing a data URI shouldn't be difficult, and it isn't. As someone that works on the Firefox DevTools Debugger, I'm often typing out data URIs to illustrate problems. The format is:

data:text/html,<body class="blah"></body>

We're all so ingrained to use protocol://subdomain.domain.tld addresses that data URIs look foreign...but they require the least amount of resources to express content!

Recent Features

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!