Berners-Lee: Looking Back, There Would Be No Double Slash

[engine]

Berners-Lee: Looking Back, There Would Be No Double Slash [bits.blogs.nytimes.com]

Any conversation with Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web’s bedrock software standards, tends to be fast-paced and nonlinear.
If he were do it over again today, would he do anything differently? Any regrets?

Mr. Berners-Lee smiled and admitted he might make one change — a small one. He would get rid of the double slash “//” after the “http:” in Web addresses.

The double slash, though a programming convention at the time, turned out to not be really necessary, Mr. Berners-Lee explained. 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.

[phranque]

not to mention that one of the most difficult common expressions to verbalize is "http://www.".
the "p" is also redundant.
i would have started with "htt:w3."

[MartinWeb]

Is there truly a point to typing http:// ?
While on the subject, why is typing http:// and www. necessary?

[ChanandlerBong]

I've never typed http:// in my life.

cnn.com does it in a browser
www.cnn.com will hyperlink it for you in e-mail clients and WP programs.

[phranque]

you should type the "www." subdomain IF that is the canonical domain for the site you are addressing and you want to remove any ambiguity in the url you are providing.
otherwise you are dependent on the server to provide a proper 301 redirect to the canonical domain.
theoretically there could be different content served from those two domains.

regarding the protocol specification in the url, your browser will typically assume the default of http: - however it is possible to serve different content at http://example.com/ vs [example.com...]

another reason to specify the protocol when providing this information to others in a web or email document is that many email clients (and forum/blog software) will make a link to something that looks like a url as ChanandlerBong mentioned.
these may not recognize example.com but will usually recognize http://example.com/, which is important if your canonical domain doesn't specify the "www." subdomain.

twitter won't link to example.com but will link to http://example.com/ or www.example.com.

[MatthewHSE]

the human labor and time spent typing those two keystrokes countless millions of times in browser address boxes.

It would be an interesting study to find out how many calories have been burned that way! ;)

[piatkow]

Both my work and home PCs will assume http:// if it isn't typed. The only time I type it is when hand coding a link.
With the benefit of hindsight there are lots of things that would be done differently.

[PCInk]

cnn.com does it in a browser
www.cnn.com will hyperlink it for you in e-mail clients and WP programs.

Only because the internet is so popular these days. In very old browsers, cnn.com does not work and email/WP programs would not automatically hyperlink these addresses for you.

You are trying to use today's technology advantages to yesterdays problems.

As far as I understand, the colon IS required but the double slash is not. http: is a reference to a file system, the same as c: with the difference being the driver for http: points to the modem rather than a disc.

[johnnie]

not to mention that one of the most difficult common expressions to verbalize is "http://www.".

Isn't that what 'dub dub dub' is for? Or is that UK-only?

[ronin]

I had hoped at one point, that 'www.' might be verbalised in the English language as 'u6dot' but it seems that never caught on...

[Status_203]

I had hoped at one point, that 'www.' might be verbalised in the English language as 'u6dot' but it seems that never caught on...

Hexa-u dot?

[MrHard]

The programming of an ancient clunker must have // in it.