Berners-Lee regrets the double-slash
INTERNET PIONEER Sir Tim Berners-Lee has expressed regret over the addition of characters to the web's URL address system.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Berners-Lee said that the use of two forward-slash characters in the URL was unnecessary and made web site addresses needlessly long.
He explained that the intent was to separate the protocol name (such as HTTP or FTP) from the rest of the address, but as it turned out only the colon was necessary.
"Think of the amount of print that we could have saved if I would have just removed the double slash," Berners-Lee said, somewhat light-heartedly.
"But there you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time."
The comments came as part of a symposium interview Berners-Lee gave on the development of the web and its future direction. He noted the need for a "semantic" web that makes better use of data and presents it in new forms.
Berners-Lee is widely considered to be one of the fathers of the Internet and is often regarded as one of the greatest minds in computing history. While working at CERN in the 1980s, he developed much of the protocol and structure for what would later become the web, including the use of the HTTP protocol for transferring data.
The work earned Berners-Lee a knighthood in 2004 and three years later he was awarded the Order of Merit. Currently Berners-Lee is working at MIT as head of the World Wide Web Consortium. µ
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IMHO This guy should has changed (and perhaps improved) everybody's life much more than the Duke of Cupertino....
The web and (unfortunately) x86 have definitely had a huge impact on our lives. And it isn't over yet!
And, oh... neither of them explodes!
"He noted the need for a "semantic" web that makes better use of data and presents it in new forms."
Is he building/has he built one yet?
*With Pirates in Private Yin to Accompany and Edutain AI NEUKlearer XSSXXXXual Yang.
I'd have regretted the "www." just as much as the "//". With well set-up DNS there really no need for it, something which most sane servers at least now realise. Both sets of redundant characters a potential pain in the backside to enter on limited UIs.
we could have saved if people wrote HTML instead of Pointless Document Format.
TB-L - if you've killed a couple of trees, Adobes done for a whole rainforest.
People who type “\” when they mean “/”, or vice-versa.
The reason why what used to be just known as “slash” now has to be known as “forward-slash”. Think of how much those extra syllables are contributing to Global Warming...
thought a few years ago he'd already said he regretted using "www." and not "web." for web addresses.
So my cursor moves up the address bar, I delete the "//" from this very page, and hit enter and it still works!
This is a feature, http:// is legal C/C++
www is just the convention for naming the default website host, but it sure doesn't need to be named that, nor is it assumed to be by the DNS... which normally requires you to specify it using a cname record.
Having a host name is still important... as plenty of domains run multiple http hosts... and they can't all be called www
WWW is the prime example that the web was designed by egomaniacal jerk offs. That and TLDs, I mean really, is dot com really required?
Douch bags all around.
I'd like to know what Drashek has to say about this.