Is Foreign code different from US code?

re slashes going the opposite way in URLs

[Lorel]

Hi All,

I'm redesigning a site originally designed by someone from a european country which obviously is way below W3C standards because I found hundreds of broken codes on the site.

Mainly I'm just curious about the following:

he had the URLs all starting thusly:

http:\\www.domainname.here

(i.e, using backwards slashes).

The owner of the site (who lives in Australia) said the URLs worked on his end but didn't on mine so I changed them around.

I'm just wondering if they write code differently in european countries --and specifically the URLs (except for language difficulties).

lori

[Fischerlaender]

http:\\www.domainname.here - language difficulties?

No, at least here in Germany we can use a slash quite well. Okay, we have to press the shift key to access it, but the backslash is even harder to press - you must use the Right-Alt key to type it in.

I strongly believe this has to do with Windows, which uses the backslash in separating folders in the file system. If you aren't too experienced and are developing on a Windows system, it could be an obvious idea to type in such a wannabe-URL.

Did you say Australia? Well, isn't everything down there turned upside down? ;-)

[encyclo]

No, the code is the same everywhere, although the person who did the site originally obviously had a singular lack of talent/competence for the task. Incompetance can strike anywhere, and it is not related to the country of origin.

However, as everyone knows that everything in Australia is upside down, perhaps that's why the wonky URLs worked there ;)

<added>Fischerlaender just proved that feeble jokes about Australia are the same everywhere too!</added>

[sebbothebutcher]

if i type http:\\something.com into firefox it changes it automatically to ht*p://something.com! the same thing happens in IE... so i belive it does (at least theoreticaly) not matter wether you use http:\\ or http:// although it doesn't look nice...

note: i just wrote ht*p because otherwise it is displayed as a link

[iamlost]

It used to be (?!) a common coding mistake from people who work(ed) with MS Windows files. Open a file on a MS Windows machine and you can see what I mean.

It has nothing to do with Australia whose denizens may be upside down but are not (usually) backwards ;-)

[Lorel]

Thanks to everyone who replied.

Lori