The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth

Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by orf on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:27PM (#12118145)

Perhaps the author has a point, but I don't think it's as bad as he puts it. Grandma and Grandad don't need to learn UNIX paths to use the net, they just need to know one thing: the hostname. They type in "google.com" or "walmart.com" and that's it, not hard to grok. Perhaps they don't fully get what .com means but they know it's needed and some sites have different ones.

You never see an advert with "visit our site at http://user:[email protected]/app/page1244.html?abc=def#hel..., it's just "mycompany.com". The structure of the URL's once the user has hit the landing page and clicked a couple of links doesn't need to be known by the user, nor should the user care.

To put it simply: if it was hard then the web wouldn't be as big as it is now. Non-technical people understand simple URI's and that's all that's needed.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by zackbloom on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:32PM (#12118171)

I don't actually take sides on the question of if the URL should be formatted as it is. It's almost too ingrained in my mind at this point to seriously consider other forms.

I would say my biggest criticism of it is it's rather intolerant of human error. A single mistyped character, and you are not going to the website you intend. I think that's the reason searching for something on Google can actually be a better experience than trying to figure out the URL directly.

To your advertisement point, there was a long history of companies including the http:// and www in their ads. There's always this of course too: http://i.imgur.com/cfTxpd2.jpg

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by prplhaz4 on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:46PM (#12118237)

I believe the problem with getting to specific content still exists with the search engine approach (and, as you say, may be partially resolved by typing in the exact title of the content you're looking for).

I think search engines are also powerful in that they can provide context - google knows that when I search for C#, I am not looking for anything musical...but that inference is at odds with being able to pinpoint a specific content item out of a more or less infinite pile.

We were all forced to learn the technical constructs of mailing addresses and phone numbers, and URLs provide a similar service to a much larger problem set (so it's not surprising to me that they must be more complex).

I'm sure someone smarter than me will find a solution sooner or later...

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by JoshTriplett on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:01PM (#12118505)

That link seems to lead to a 1x1 jpeg.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by zackbloom on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:21PM (#12118567)

Ah thanks, fixed!

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by userbinator on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:27PM (#12119160)

The structure of the URL's once the user has hit the landing page and clicked a couple of links doesn't need to be known by the user, nor should the user care.

Sorry, but that's a completely wrong and horrible attitude and it's the sort of sentiment which leads to things like browsers hiding URLs and the resultant rise of even more computer-illiterate users completely dependent on (and thus at the mercy of) search engines and their opaque, proprietary, and sometimes completely idiotic ranking systems... you may find the vigorous discussion here relevant:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7677898

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by greggman on Monday July 18, 2016 @09:04PM (#12118901)

In Japan ads don't say go to "somecompany.com" they say "search for 'somecompany'"

Yes a realize that might be problematic. Just passing on the different internet culture.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by pfranz on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:04PM (#12119085)

"search for 'somecompany'" only really works if you have enough seo for all search services for that term. "somecompany.com" is something that gives just enough context to let you know it's a webpage and you type it in your browser. Just like #pokemongo lets you know it's a topic, likely on twitter and @pokemongo is the username of a company, likely on twitter.

But on the "pro" side for searching, it should help autocorrect people who can't remember the specific name or the correct spelling.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by kevinpet on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:19PM (#12119128)

I wonder how much of this is related to historical inability to use native characters in domain names.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by stonogo on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:39PM (#12118206)

That's not entirely true:

http://cdn.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/usa/files/tpp_ad_... http://i.imgur.com/HWNM1KZ.jpg http://www.shofforddesign.com/wp-content/uploads/Oakley-Maga...

This sort of thing is useful for advertising specifically. In the examples I've given:

1) targeted information 2) short url 3) direct-to-relevant-site from the ad

In my experience, in-house or business-wide advertising tends to use just the domain, but campaigns farmed out to marketing firms or campaigns related to specific products tend to use path info as well as domain name.

And while I've never seen auth credentials in an advertised URL, I have frequently seen "example.com/product#platform" style urls, where #platform (and sometimes ?platform) indicates which magazine the ad appeared in.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by bronson on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:44PM (#12118638)

All of your examples have a domain name followed by a single, short landing page identifier. No knowledge of URLs / paths needed.

You seem to be reinforcing the OP's point.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by jonknee on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:48PM (#12118649)

None of those examples support your point, they are all short URLs. Also, the Doctors Without Borders one is a URL and a social media hashtag. Probably every time you see #whatever it is for a hashtag, it has nothing to do with a URL.

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by wtbob on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:28PM (#12118592)

> I have frequently seen "example.com/product#platform" style urls, where #platform (and sometimes ?platform) indicates which magazine the ad appeared in.

Since the fragment doesn't get sent to the server, that seems broken …

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by soared on Monday July 18, 2016 @09:35PM (#12118994)

You can grab anchors with google analytics

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Re:The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth by wtbob on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @01:49AM (#12120014)

Ouch, that's horrible — I'd no idea. Yet another reason to disable JavaScript by default.

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