Filed under: Web
Web inventor: Sorry about the //
Tim Berners-Lee pretty much created the World Wide Web as we know it. And looking back, he says that while the "http" part of a URL makes sense, there's no particularly good reason for typing the double-slashes.
While Berners-Lee laments that many trees and work-hours could have been saved if he had left out the unnecessary // marks, I'm guessing that nobody was really all that hurt by their presence. But I guess it does show that in hindsight, pretty much anything could be done better.
via Slashdot
Get a WordPress.com Blog
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
AJ Viviano said 1:55PM on 10-16-2009
Wait, I thought Al Gore invented the internet? Who is this guy? :)
Reply
Rick Bungle said 3:17PM on 10-16-2009
I was thinking the same thing. There's an error in this story. Al Gore created the internet.
Reply
Omar said 7:49PM on 10-16-2009
The Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing!
The Internet is the physical structure (hardware), while the WWW is mostly the software layer.
Reply
Mysterius said 8:01PM on 10-16-2009
While I was thinking about this, I wondered whether "http" itself could have been shortened to "htp". Thoughts?
"http://" vs "htp:"
Reply
Cam said 8:03AM on 10-17-2009
http=hyper text transfer protocol
I'm not sure it could be shortened.
Mysterius said 8:03AM on 10-17-2009
@Cam: Yes, I know that "HTTP" stands for "Hypertext Transfer Protocol".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol
Since "hypertext" is one word, though, it doesn't need to be represented by two letters.
And on the technical side, we have "FTP" for "File Transfer Protocol", so 3 letter abbreviations don't seem to pose a problem.
I was just pointing out that if we were to dump "//" somehow, we might also consider dumping "http" in favor of "htp".
dplockheart said 10:16AM on 10-17-2009
3.2. Authority Component
Many URI schemes include a top hierarchical element for a naming
authority, such that the namespace defined by the remainder of the
URI is governed by that authority. This authority component is
typically defined by an Internet-based server or a scheme-specific
registry of naming authorities.
authority = server | reg_name
The authority component is preceded by a double slash "//" and is
terminated by the next slash "/", question-mark "?", or by the end of
the URI. Within the authority component, the characters ";", ":",
"@", "?", and "/" are reserved.
- Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax ("http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2396")
Granted no longer applied in todays web standards Im sure but it dose have a bit of sense to it originally.
From what I gather "//" starts the authority component and "/" ends it. Sort of like how "../" represents root directory and "/" represents current directory.
Reply
Brad Jensen said 2:12PM on 10-18-2009
"Sort of like how "../" represents root directory and "/" represents current directory."
/ = Root (not current directory)
../ = Parent Directory of the Current Directory (not root)
at least with X-HTML links.
biaachmonkie said 8:27PM on 10-19-2009
Better still would have been reversing the dns syntax.
instead of "www.downloadsquad.com/2009/10/16/web-inventor-sorry-about-the/"
you would have "com.downloadsquad.www/2009/10/16/web-inventor-sorry-about-the/"
The way it is now is wierd in that you go from most specific to least then back to more specific. Plus think of all the feature it would enable like intellisense you start typing "com.downloadsquad." and via dns the browser it could look up all the subdomains, it would make discovery so much easier.
Stupid lack of forethought.
Reply