"://" Web Creator Explains Two Strokes are absolutely meaningless

[gster]

A light has been shone on one of the great mysteries of the internet. What is the point of the two forward slashes that sit directly infront of the “www” in every internet website address?

The answer, according to the British scientist who created the world wide web, is that there isn’t one.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote the code that transformed a private computer network into the web two decades ago, has finally come clean about the about the infuriating // that internet surfers have cursed so frequently.

The physicist admitted that if he had his time again, he might have made a change, or more specifically, two. “Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //”, he said, speaking at a symposium on the future of technology in Washington DC last week.

Sir Tim ruefully explained that when he started devising the network almost 30 years ago he could not have predicted the hassle that has been caused by his small error in thinking about the way a web address is written.

“Boy, now people on the radio are calling it ‘backslash backslash’,” Sir Tim told his audience, even though he knows they are, in fact, forward slashes.

Showing them his index finger he added: “People are having to use that finger so much.”

He knows that no one has calculated the number of exasperated groans emitted at the sight of a “syntax error” message generated by the grave omission of a single slash.

Nor is there a figure on the number of occupational therapists kept in work treating repetitive strain injury caused by prodding the far right-hand button on the bottom row of a standard keyboard.

Nowadays web browsers such as Explorer usually fill in the slashes if you start the address with “www”.

But Sir Tim still laments the amount of additional printing that those two strokes have created over the years — an unimaginable legacy of printer ink and paper that has been wasted on those unnecessary characters.

The physicist is credited with being the architect of the world wide web, which was to transform the internet into something usable and understandable by more than just computer programmers.

“Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere else were linked,” he mused in his book, Weaving the Web. “Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which anything could be linked to anything.”

Today the URLs — better known as web addresses — that Sir Tim created, beginning http://www, are familiar to anyone navigating their way around the internet.

Many have argued that he would have been awarded the Nobel prize had his discoveries had been spun out of traditional sciences.

Today, he is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the web’s continued development.

Considering his achievements, maybe Sir Tim can be forgiven his double-slash mistake. How was he to know that his interesting idea would cause the biggest revolution in communications since the creation of the printing press?

The error is characteristic of a restless man with big ideas that he wanted to implement quickly. Colleagues at the CERN institute in Geneva where he developed his ideas asked him to speak in French instead of English in the hope of slowing down his torrent of words.

If he had eased up a little, maybe he would have spotted his error in thinking.

Although he acknowledges the mistake, he addresses it with a shrug of the shoulders.

“There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” he said.

SOURCE

[VintageElise]

I have honestly never noticed them. I knew they were there but I never type Http:// anyway. Since most browsers let you just type www.

[wonders1982]

I always write like psu.com sometimes with www

I myself type ps3forums.com. lol

[HaTriX]

I would have thought they would have been their for directory purposes, but I guess not.

But it doesn't matter. There is no need to type it anyways.

There isn't even a need to type www. If you do you are wasting your time. 99% of websites don't require www. Some do though, so don't think its just protocol of firefox to go to the site if you don't type www.

[gster]

some sites you just type their names

e.g. in firefox just type "hotmail" hit enter it loads

in fact if you type "games" into firefox it goes directly to addictinggames

a few months back that went to miniclip

it must be an in-built firefox site searcher thingy

[HaTriX]

some sites you just type their names

e.g. in firefox just type "hotmail" hit enter it loads

in fact if you type "games" into firefox it goes directly to addictinggames

a few months back that went to miniclip

it must be an in-built firefox site searcher thingy

Really doesn't have to do with firefox. When you type that in, it searchs for it on google, and goes to the first link. It involves META tags a website has, and pretty much how much it is paying to be on the first page of google

Not all websites can handle redirecting like hotmail. Sometimes you will just get an address not found. Ever noticed web addresses like www1 ?

[keefy]

ctrl+enter for the win. only works for .com though

[Seahawkk]

i just type ps3forums.com not even the www

[HaTriX]

i just type ps3forums.com not even the www

Handy isn't it ?

If you people ever buy a domain, you will better understand why exactly you don't have to type www. You will pay extra for it though.

Good example I just noticed: https://ssl.perfora.net/www.ficaraud...iew.shopscript

Notice where the www. is

[[DT]]

Handy isn't it ?

If you people ever buy a domain, you will better understand why exactly you don't have to type www. You will pay extra for it though.

Good example I just noticed: https://ssl.perfora.net/www.ficaraud...iew.shopscript

Notice where the www. is

The www in that URL is just a directory. It's not a domain or anything.

The prefix in front of the domain root is a host identifier. It's a machine (or in load balanced environment, machines). You can make it anything you like. Again, in the above referenced URL the host is 'ssl'.

You can simply alias the root domain to respond to requests and not require an explicit hostname.

A domain registration doesn't specifically allow/disallow this (or charge anything more). I have dozens of hostnames referenced off our root domain.

Side note: years ago (pre-99) I had the domain comdotcom.com and I setup a hostname called com, for web traffic so it was com.comdotcom.com which was fun to tell people:

"Oh yeah, check out my website, it's at com dot com dot com dot com"

*blank stares*

[HaTriX]

The www in that URL is just a directory. It's not a domain or anything.

The prefix in front of the domain root is a host identifier. It's a machine (or in load balanced environment, machines). You can make it anything you like. Again, in the above referenced URL the host is 'ssl'.

You can simply alias the root domain to respond to requests and not require an explicit hostname.

A domain registration doesn't specifically allow/disallow this (or charge anything more). I have dozens of hostnames referenced off our root domain.

Side note: years ago (pre-99) I had the domain comdotcom.com and I setup a hostname called com, for web traffic so it was com.comdotcom.com which was fun to tell people:

"Oh yeah, check out my website, it's at com dot com dot com dot com"

*blank stares*

Sorry, I'm no good at explaining it. I'm not directly trying to say its a domain.

I have already learned all this in my Cisco A+ networking class.... Just not the easiest for me to explain.