How can an html file be associated with a folder?

Question

I downloaded a web page along with its associated files. It indicated that it downloaded xxx.htm. What it actually downloaded was xxx.htm and a folder called xxx_files that contained the associated files. This is what I wanted but I found a strange thing happening. The folder was tied to the file. When I move either of them from one folder to another both of them moved. If I tried to rename one of them it the system indicated that it would cause problems with the associated file. Where is this type of action documented and is it only with html where the file and the folder have the same name except for the word files?

Note that the html file was outside of the folder and was not a shortcut. If I renamed them and ignored the warning the link was broken.

Answer 1

Yes this is the correct behavior. Windows recognizes the faact that the files needed for the html page to display need to be relative to the html file, so any changes are reflected.

Basically, the html file is just a "blueprint" of what is on the page. All images need to be somewhere and the code in the html page needs to know where that "somewhere" is. If you open the html file and view the source, you will probably see that the links to the images on the page look something like this:

img source=".../folder/name.jpg"

That ... is a relative path - meaning it is relative to where ever the html file is.

So to keep things intact, Windows will rename the associated folder to maintain those paths.