Robert Fisher

Just thinking out loud

On better URLs

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Consider the humble URL:

http://robert.infogami.com/On_better_URLs

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has suggested that when defining URLs, he should've lost the second slash & reversed the DNS name.

http:/com.infogami.robert/On_better_URLs

That's not bad, but the protocol then rightfully belongs after the DNS name:

com.infogami.robert/http/On_better_URLs

Now a switch from http to https is put in the proper perspective.

As much as I think people should avoid dealing with raw URLs as much as possible, I also think it's worth avoiding ugly bits like "http" or "www":

com.infogami.robert/web/On_better_URLs

An argument can be made for unifying the separators:

com/infogami/robert/web/On_better_URLs

I think it's worth a little extra syntax to make resolving them easier:

com/infogami/robert/web:/On_better_URLs

Or maybe...

com.infogami.robert/web/On_better_URLs
domain.node/service/path/to/resource

What about ftp & mailto URLs?

org.w3.ftp/file/pub/doc/README.txt
org.w3/mail/timbl

What about relative URLs?

Our new URLs should really start with a dot to represent the DNS root.

last updated 1 year ago #