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Tim Berners-Lee Is Sorry About the Slashes
Stony Stevenson writes "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 in front of the 'www' in every internet website address? The answer, according to Tim Berners-Lee, who had an important role in the creation of the web, is that there isn't one. Berners-Lee revisited that design decision during a recent talk with Paul Mohr of the NY Times when Mohr asked if he would do any differently, given the chance. 'Look at all the paper and trees, he said, that could have been saved if people had not had to write or type out those slashes on paper over the years — not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes.'"
From technical point of view, *not* having the // could create problems more easily. For example if you include port number in the URL and browser or program tries to look at what protocol it is based on value before first :
http://tech.slashdot.org:80/story/09/10/14/1219215/Tim-Berners-Lee-Is-Sorry-About-the-Slashes
http:tech.slashdot.org:80/story/09/10/14/1219215/Tim-Berners-Lee-Is-Sorry-About-the-Slashes
Now if you dont write that http: in browser:
tech.slashdot.org:80/story/09/10/14/1219215/Tim-Berners-Lee-Is-Sorry-About-the-Slashes
Now the browser would think the protocol is tech.slashdot.org and tries to pass it to a responsible program instead of loading it. This means you would now need to actually type in the http: which none of us do now. Or dropping general URI support from browsers and IM windows and any other programs (you know all those irc:// spotify: and so on URI's). Or then typing in the :80 would be mandatory.
I used my time modem to login to the Internet3 in 2022 and pulled this review from cdweggbuy (yes, that's a full URL because people thought it was ok to remove gTLDs and also got rid of that pesky http:/// for a VeriLogiSoft Computer Interface device. But of course I got infected by a future virus because my Firefox plugin that matches malicious content didn't know how to identify as a URL.
Ok back to the present.
The problem with letting people have what they want is that the majority of people don't understand why things are the way they are. Tim made the right choice,
he just feels that it is wrong now because he's had to hear people complain about it for the past 15-20 years. But when it comes down to it you need some parts of a URL to indicate what something is.
not to mention the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes.'
Has anyone had to do that since NINETEEN NINETY FOUR? Is Berners-Lee still using Mosaic or something?
... get your pitchforks and torches! We've finally found the guy responsible for those satanic slashes!!!
.. we could've had colondot instead of slashdot! I like it!
Nah. Slashes are fine, but Microsoft should be sorry about backslashes!
We'd all be reading colondot right now.
No one types them anyways. All of the browsers automatically throw the default http syntax in.
Except web-developers you insensitive clod!
So we could be called "Colondotters?" No thanks.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Not to mention all the time wasted trying to explain to people the difference between a slash and a backslash.
Doesn't the same logic hold for the person that decided it should be 'http' for hypertext transfer protocol and not just simply 'h'? Yes, http is more descriptive but unnecessary. Had another protocol came along starting with 'h' they could have opted for another letter or -- if they were all taken -- became a two letter protocol. I mean, if we're going to get into pedantic apologies for lack of brevity I would assume the three unnecessary letters in http are a greater crime than the double slashes, right? Of course, rarely do I find myself typing anything other than the domain and TLD (i.e. slashdot.org, mail.google.com, woot.com) so this has really become a non-issue.
My work here is dung.
There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time. he said.
If the human race is ever brought before a court to account for itself, that's going to be its entire defence. Nuclear power, the Internet, ID cards, ... that excuse works for everything!
I think it's interesting to be able to talk to someone who picked something that affects so many people on a daily basis. Of course, it's a really tiny effect, but very visible. He could have picked two colons or dollar signs or any random thing. It's not often you get to make a decision that ends up being used globally.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Every time I set-up a sub-domain for work I always have to tell my boss "http://subdomain." out loud first, in the hope that he'll not prefix "www".
Sometimes he still just does both, then asks me why it isn't working. This results in a lengthy conversation where we're both saying "http colon slash slash" and "www" to each other. Makes me want to stab him in the face.
Back when I wrote a thesis on dissemination of company-internal information via the world-wide web, in 1994 or so, I remember stating that originally, an indication of which network protocol to use was meant to go between the slashes. But since, in the real world, the network protocol was always TCP/IP, this was made the default and whatever was once put between the slashes was dropped.
Of course, I don't remember the source or anything.
I had occasion to have an email conversation with Berners-Lee at one time (he bought a license for a program of mine), and I asked if he regretted choosing "www" instead of "web". I was very surprised that this was not something he'd change if he could do the whole thing over ...
Saying "double u double u double u" takes about twice as long as saying "web" so that would have been far more beneficial than worrying about the slashes.
There was a bit of a drive to use "web" some years ago, but unfortunately that fizzled..
What I wonder is why the designers of DNS put the name in reverse? If the name had been in most-significant-first order, one could have tabcompleted it properly (using history and maybe zonetransfers of smaller zones). Also, if http had included a way to get _parsable_ directory listings, the tab-completion could have gone even further...
http://edu.wu<TAB>
http://edu.wustl
http://edu.wustl.wu<TAB>
http://edu.wustl.wuarchive
http://edu.wustl.wuarchive/p<TAB>l<TAB>d<TAB>f<TAB>
http://edu.wustl.wuarchive/pub/linux/distributions/fedora
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
At the time there was also gopher and WAIS- both of which were supported by mosaic. The protocol was necessary to differentiate.
like when I open a local file in my browser I get "file:///"
-- Boycott Shell
Saying 'www' might be slower, but typing 'www' is much faster. Which one do you do more often?
It is explained by TBL at http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#etc
"I wanted the syntax of the URI to separate the bit which the web browser has to know about (www.example.com) from the rest (the opaque string which is blindly requested by the client from the server). Within the rest of the URI, slashes (/) were the clear choice to separate parts of a hierarchical system, and I wanted to be able to make a link without having to know the name of the service (www.example.com) which was publishing the data. The relative URI syntax is just unix pathname syntax reused without apology. Anyone who had used unix would find it quite obvious. Then I needed an extension to add the service name (hostname). In fact this was similar to the problem the Apollo domain system had had when they created a network file system. They had extended the filename syntax to allow //computername/file/path/as/usual. So I just copied Apollo. Apollo was a brand of unix workstation."
I love that a post that begins "I used my time modem..." can be modded as Insightful. God bless you, you crazy mods.
And crazier Slashdot admins. Because they want to discourage smart-ass comments, "Funny" gives no karma on slashdot.org. An alternating sequence of "Funny" and the allegedly M2-proof "Overrated" quickly drains a poster's karma. "Insightful", on the other hand, invites no such danger.
ObTopic: Without the slashes, Slashdot would have been called something else.
better idea: Just alias the www version and it won't matter if the boss (or anyone else for that matter) confuses it that way.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
I actually don't think it is! You can (and almost certainly do) use more than one finger to type web, so the speed with which it can be typed isn't related at all to how quickly you can move your fingers. By the time the W is pressed, you should've already been moving to the E in anticipation of having to type it, etc.
WWW on the other hand is limited by how quickly (and accurately) you can move one finger up and down.
Here's another demonstration: see how quickly you can tap out a repetitive rhythm with just one finger. Now try it alternating between two fingers. See?
I call bullshit.
WWW is no quicker to type than web, and in fact web is more natural to type quickly because may hands can pre-prepare the "e" and "b" while I'm still pressing the "w" and I think that's the same for anyone who's done any decent amount of typing in their lives (i.e. almost everyone over the age of 18 by now!)
I think web is a better idea, in retrospect, but I can't remember the last time I typed www either - it comes naturally and I don't even notice, but http:/// is still a pain in the bum to speak over the phone, especially when people aren't used to the syntax.
In Germany they usually say the www, but never the dots, so the website would be: www bild de
I always thought that was odd.
What's worse is people who say "forward slash". There is no such animal. It's either a backslash or a slash. Does anybody say full colon as opposed to a semi-colon ? I use it as a natural filter against people who don't know what they're talking about.
I *like* unique, easily-visually-identifiable structures. a@b.c is an email address. If you're in the U.S. you know that XXX-XXX-XXXX is a phone number and that XXX-XX-XXXX is a social security number. You know that X/Y/Z is a date, even if it's not always clear if it's M/D/Y or D/M/Y.
"://", while verbose, is very clear and you always know EXACTLY what it is and what it means--that it's the START of a COMPLETE Web address. If it would have been just a : or a / it wouldn't always be clear because those symbols, by themselves, are often used elsewhere and it would lead to confusion.
Now if we could just teach a planet full of lusers the difference between "slash" and "backslash." People always say "backslash" because they've heard computer guys say it every so often when talking about logging onto MS servers so they call EVERY slash a backslash. Damn you Paul Allen!!!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The slashes are the only way I can make myself feel...
Store a stupid bookmark. Then you only have to type https://blah.blah.blah/ one time.
You should be more responsible than to link to https://blah.blah.blah/. It's got an invalid cert!
The government can't save you.
OK, maybe it could have been reduced to one slash, since there's no :/ smiley elsewhere in the URL pattern, but you need to be able to distinguish relative URLs from absolute ones. Without some unique token sequence that was guaranteed not to occur elsewhere in a URI you're going to run into problems. Start removing components from a fully specified URI and see how quickly you run into ambiguities:
method://username:password@host:port/paths/terminal?token=value&token=value
The reasons for the // convention for the "super root" in networks like OpenNet and FutureNet, that he was copying, are still valid in URIs. You need something that's easily parsed by computers, and easily recognized by humans. When I first saw the syntax I was all "slash slash whiskey tango foxtrot?", but after using it for a while I was convinced that I was wrong and he was right, and even if he's forgotten why... I still think he was right the first time.
That's just your language (which is arguably the dominant language). In my mother tongue, the 'w' is pronounced as [wey].
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Uhh.... no. Ring finger for W, middle finger for E, index finger for B. I can do it almost instantaneously.
I use the term "forwardslash" fairly frequently, because a good number of times when I say "slash" people ask "which one?" While "slash" and "backslash" are technically correct, "forwardslash" is a descriptive synonym for "slash". Yes, it adds unnecessary syllables, but it's not nearly as bad as the myriad (and sometimes very ambiguous) names for "*" (asterisk, star, splat, bang, etc) and "#" (number, pound, hash, octothorp, etc).
I do not use "full colon" except when I've had too much curry and am waiting in line at a restroom asking the person in the stall to please hurry up lest they exit the stall into a sudden Superfund Site.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Just like one slash at the beginning is for the root directory in an absolute path, two slashes are for the root of the network.
The only question is, why it's
[protocol]://[sub].[domain].[tld]/[path]...
instead of
[protocol]://[tld]/[domain]/[sub]/[path]...
But I guess that way you can separate what's a different server and what is not.
Only the file protocol has it wrong, because it's not the root of the network, when you write:
file:///[path]
It should be:
file:/[path]
But hey, nothing stops you from using your own syntax when you write software like a browser.
In fact, I'd love to see the net just becoming another part of the path of the "everything is a file" file system of UNIX machines.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I agree, the // does serve a purpose. Having a marker for the start of the hostname makes it possible to construct a scheme-agnostic URL.
Suppose you had a web page that might be served via either HTTP or HTTPS. You need to ensure that any resources (images and stylesheets) it references use the same protocol, else the browser will warn of a secure/insecure mix. Suppose also that the resources are hosted on a separate server (a common performance-enhancing technique).
The solution: <img src="//host/path/to/image.png">
Voilà -- same-protocol URLs without conditionals in the HTML. It works in all common browsers. It is possible thanks to the double slash!
The BBC have put together a list of 10 other uses for a /: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8306515.stm
infront
That is not a word.
the "www" in every internet website address
Many website addresses don't begin with "www", including the address of the page you're currently reading.
The physicist admitted that if he had his time again, he might have made a change, or more specifically, two.
Well, what's the other one? I'm waiting, don't keep me in suspense here... (Not to mention, correctly speaking he would have done it differently, not have made a change.)
"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.
He does? Whew, glad they cleared that one up.
Showing them his index finger he added: "People are having to use that finger so much."
I type the slash key with my pinky finger, not my index finger. I even checked the British keyboard to make sure it's not a culture disconnect. The British keyboard seems to have it in the same place as the keyboard I'm familiar with.
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.
I've never seen such an error message, and both Firefox and IE correctly convert http:/google.com to http://google.com.
Nowadays web browsers such as Explorer
Explorer is Windows' file system manager. The web browser is called Internet Explorer.
the British scientist who created the world wide web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote the code that transformed a private computer network into the web two decades ago
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.
Shouldn't they say it a third time, in case someone missed it the first two times?
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.
And here's with the www business again. Stop it, I say.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
What I wonder is why the designers of DNS put the name in reverse? If the name had been in most-significant-first order, one could have tabcompleted it properly (using history and maybe zonetransfers of smaller zones).
Not only that, but it would go a _long_ way towards preventing phishing scams.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
Let's just drop www altogether!
So you're saying Bang is "!", !"*"?
I've always mentally read it as "triple dub". That doesn't take so long to say, and most people understand what I mean by it when I use it in conversation.
That's... interesting. Do you always "hear voices" while mentally reading? I find I frequently don't realize I don't know how to pronounce a word until the first time I try to use it in spoken conversation. When reading text, it simply doesn't come up how it "sounds"...
Then again, apparently I'm strange. People talk about whether someone can think in another language or not, as if it requires greater aptitude to think in another language rather than merely speak it, whereas I point out it's a necessary prerequisite to be able to think it in order to speak it. But I'm told they're talking about "just thinking" rather than thinking about what you're going to say -- in which case, I don't use any language at all, I just think thoughts. I only think words in a language when I'm thinking about speaking. If I'm thinking about water, I use neither the word "water" or "agua" in my head, which words to use only comes up when I'm thinking about how to articulate my thoughts. I can't imagine how slow it would be to actually think in a language, native or not.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Neither, I haven't dealt with a domain in more than a year that didn't either automatically redirect foo.com to www.foo.com, or had the web server running on the foo.com host itself. I frankly don't know why anyone uses protocol-specific subdomains at all any more. Either ftp.foo.com and www.foo.com are the same machine or they aren't. If they are, then there's no reason to have the subdomains because the machine is already listening on ports 21 and 80. If they aren't the same machine, then at best only the ftp host needs a subdomain, because everyone expects foo.com to serve port 80.
(However, 'web' is faster to type because I can use three fingers to do it almost simultaneously, but 'www' has to be hit by the same finger three times. ;-) )
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased