What really happens when you navigate to a URL
As a software developer, you certainly have a high-level picture of how web apps work and what kinds of technologies are involved: the browser, HTTP, HTML, web server, request handlers, and so on.
In this article, we will take a deeper look at the sequence of events that take place when you visit a URL. More…
Filed in Links on 22 Feb 10 | Tags: reference, url
Certainly from the user perspective, much of our interaction with web pages is dramatically simplified. (Imagine if we had to remember to type 141.146.9.91 whenever we wanted to visit the website of a particular Bay Area software pro- I mean software/hardware provider.)
However, after the ReadWriteWeb Facebook login fiasco, and after reading the comments of Jake Kuramoto and others, I began to wonder whether the user should even have to concern him/herself with URLs. Computers are supposed to take care of the routine stuff for us. If I want to login to Facebook, why not just tell the computer that I want to login to Facebook? Is there any reason why the average user has to remember that facebook has to be preceded by hppt\:: or whatever weird characters that the computer geeks invented?
In short, do URLs serve a true purpose for the average computer user?
Most web browsers do not need http:// prior the URL. To me, a URL serves an important purpose: it is the unique address of your online presence. Compare that to the unique address of your physical presence, your home address. Bookmarks (aka favorites) were created so that the average computer user does not need to remember online addresses.