World Wide Web creator sorry for the '//' and other things that don't matter
By Laura June 
posted October 15th 2009 10:02PM
posted October 15th 2009 10:02PM
posted October 15th 2009 10:02PM
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Thank you TIm :D
There are so many typos in this article, it's not even funny.
Form instead of from. A nonsensical sentence in the middle. The weird phrasing at the end. And the fact that the // comes AFTER the http.
Wow. Editing please?
i really dont understand the whole saving trees part ... i mean how many times do you print straight up pages of URLs?
Isn't it AFTER typing "HTTP" ??
Yeah, this article is poorly written. Sometimes I think the editors just whip up a paragraph in 30 seconds minutes and completely skip the revising stage.
Hmmm, now I feel like a hypocrite. I meant to delete "minutes."
Eh, but then again, I'm not the one writing an article for a popular online blog, so it doesn't matter nearly as much.
In this business, it's about who breaks the story first, not best. At least it's on the internet, rather than in print, so it can be updated after the fact. ;)
Al Gore invented the internet... everyone knows that!
@d889 - Do you find your friends explain a lot of jokes to you?
@ctrlburn
true.. Except this story was posted a week ago on BBC news so engadget had a whole 5-7days to get the text correct
The stupid thing about this whole "admission" is that the "WWW" is far worse than the slashes. Like the slashes, the WWW conveys no identifying information (since it's the same for every URL) and thus should never have been included. Not to mention that it's the only multi-syllabic letter of the alphabet and made even worse by repeating it three times. Pretty dumb.
The www was necessary back then, because a domain owner say engadget.com may have multiple machiens for example one for FTP the other for WWW etc.
Furthermore, the www is not a requirement (see for yourself you can go to engadget.com). Also. it's up to the web site owner to have the www or not. In fact they can make it w.engadget.com or wen.engadget.com or just plain engadget.com.
Most websites having the www is not Tim's fault it's the fault of web site operators .. you may as well blame him for having to type .com at the end .. something he had nothing to do with.
@PUGGS
Internet and World Wide Web are different.
Wait a minute! Al Gore said HE invented the Internet! LOL! www.CelluliteQueen.com
http://www.
this whole thing was unnecessary. At least from an average users point of view
"Oops! This link appears to be broken."
Well, http:// was necessarily, or at least some protocol identifer. The www. wasn't necessary, but I don't think that was Tim's doing and it's becoming less and less prominent as people realize "Oh, right, that was kinda stupid."
From a user's perspective, www. is useless. From a web developer/whatever guy, it's very important. It separates the web server from the mail server (mail.).
You do realize a web server and a mail server can coexist under one domain name (as in DNS entry), right?
Could they coexist back when the http protocol was created though? The DNS system was a lot simpler in the early days, wasn't it?
Yeah, but it would be easier if everyone had standardized on "web" instead of "www" as in web.engadget.com instead of www.engadget.com for instance.
Didn't he also regret getting the URL backwards by putting the the biggest element, the TLD, last instead of first?
Wow... You seem to be using Chrome that you're getting the "Oops! ...."
That's fine, i never type it anyway.
I go straight to engadget.com . I only know a few pages that are misconfigured enough to not let you in if you forget the www.
@Robert in Texas: "Didn't he also regret getting the URL backwards by putting the the biggest element, the TLD, last instead of first?" -- TBL had nothing to do with that; that's DNS, which predates HTTP by about 10 years.
IIRC, the reason the IETF had DNS put the big end last is that people were accustomed to writing single-segment hostnames, and felt that sticking something on the end to be more specific made more sense. It was a relatively late decision, though; an earlier draft had been big-end-first, and the UK's academic network, JANET, adopted that, which led to no end of troubles. (Quick, is "cs.mit.edu" the computer science department at MIT, or a machine named "edu" in a domain named "mit", in Czechoslovakia?)
Ohh, it's okay, nobody actually types them out.
Ctrl + Enter does the trick.
(so do Shift + Enter, Ctrl + Shift + Enter)
Forget that - you just stick the url into the address bar and the browser automatically adds the http:// prefix.
Amen man. I learned that like 8 years ago, and ever since then, it pains me to watch people type the w's and .com. You should have mentioned that SHIFT + ENTER makes it .net and SHIFT + CTRL + ENTER makes it .org.
Literally my most used (probably my only) keyboard shortcut.
wow I honestly never knew that control+enter trick.
That is really useful! I always try to put my cursor in between the "www." and the ".com" so i dont have to type the whole thing out manually. This will save me tons of time! Thank you thank you!
GDI - I never knew that, grrr, thanks!
That's OK... some people don't type URLs at all. They just type "google" in the MSN searchbox on their home page (because they've never changed their start page)... click the first link... and blammo... Google shows up.
It's amazing how little people know about computers. Once, I was helping someone with their computer, and I put shortcuts in their Bookmark Bar... for their webmail, banks, local news sites, etc. Now they could visit all their favorite sites with just one click. They didn't even know how to use regular bookmarks either!
I prefer googeling (actually binging, I'm still bitter about cyanogen) than actually typing urls out. you see I fat-finger my laptop keyboard like no other and the search engines straighten things out for me quite nicely, that way I never have to visit fgacebiook,com and erngasdghet.com
I knew about those shortcuts at one time or another, but I never got into the habit of using them... although I usually just omit all the boilerplate mumbo-jumbo and trust Firefox to bring up the correct site based on keyword or something.
Makes you wonder why ctrl+alt+enter does nothing.
I don't even use ctrl+enter to get the http://www part. I wish it would just add the .com part so I could type mail.google.com and the such.
You see? I'm so used to wasting time typing .com to the end of sub domains. I cry at night about it.
Cool, I didn't know that. It really helps. Thx man.
Burn him at the stake!
I kid, I kid.
I wouldn't be here posting this and obviously getting downranked to faded oblivion without him.
Wait, the double slash goes BEFORE the http? You mean I haven't even been looking at the real world wide web for 16 years? F--- me! As for you TBL... You can get over your guilt by amputating your right hand ring finger. You won't need it for those slashes.
Actually, on Firefox at least, you can type
http:www.engadget.com/
and it still works.
Actually, on Firefox at least, you can type
engadget
and it still works.
actually, all you need to type is engadget.com sometimes when I go to google I dont even have to type .com.. I just type google and it still goes
Actually, on Chrome at least, after visiting it you can type
e
and it still works.
engad is necessary on firefox
In opera you just have to..
ah forget it.
I just click items in the RSS feed. I never go to http://www.engadget.com/
the auto history search thing by letter is in every browser
so is autocomplete for www and com.
opera also sets names for faovorites so you can jus type in the name and it goes to that site
plus ctrl+num for speed dial.
Actually, I have to write "!en" to go to http://www.engadget.com/
To search engadget i wrote "!ens [searchterm]"
Ahhh.. Firefox and its Command-Enabled Bookmarks.
The thing is, when you type just "engadget" it DOES work, but it usually takes a few seconds to auto-complete the rest. It's faster just to do "engadget.com." Doh!
THAT'S NOT AL GORE!
That's what I was confused about too....so who created the damn internet anyway