To be or not to http://
December 28, 1999
© 1999, Douglas E. Welch
The online world is filled with obscure jargon, obtuse concepts
and general misinformation. The goal at my free Internet classes at my local library is to cut through this fog and leave the
students with some understanding of Internet concepts. Certain
questions get asked again and again as new members join the class
and here is one of the perennials.
Who comes up with these things?
One question that always seems to arise is about the http prefix
seen before all web addresses (officially called Uniform Resource
Locators or URLs) when using your web browser. HyperText Transport
Protocol (http://) sounds more like a government program to move
equipment around the country than a method of accessing information
on the Internet. Like all good scientists, the developers of the
world wide web had to come up with some way of referring to the
workings of their system and this is about as stereotypical a
piece of techno-jargon as can be found. In reality, HTTP is merely
the language or dialect spoken between the world wide web browser
on your computer (i.e. Netscape Navigator/Communicator or MS Internet
Explorer) and the world wide web site you are trying to access.
Forget about it
In most cases the http:// you see before web addresses is superfluous
as 99.9% of the time you will be accessing web sites with your
web browser. If you only type in an address, say www.welchwrite.com,
you will find that your browser will add the http:// automatically.
It assumes that the address you typed is a web site and acts accordingly.
The only time you need to preface an address at all is when you
are attempting to access information that is NOT on a web server.
Even at a distance I can see the quizzical expression on your
faces. How can you use a web browser to access information that
isn’t on a web site? The truth is that web browsers have the ability
to access many different types of information besides web sites.
They can get files from File Transfer Protocol (ftp) sites and
browse information stored in Gopher servers. The secret to this
magic is using a prefix to tell your browser that the site you
are trying to access is NOT a web server (http://), but an ftp
(ftp://) or gopher site (gopher://). In fact the only time you
need to worry about the prefix at all is when it is explicitly
included as part of the address. (i.e. ftp://ftp.download.com)
While the usage of these older services is waning you may still
see them referred to in magazines and television.
AOL, different, as always
Users of America Online may find that omitting the http:// before a web address may not
work all the time. Due to the design of AOL, sometimes the system
may confuse a web address with an AOL keyword and try to send
you to someplace inside of the AOL service. Until you can remember
which places require the http:// and which do not, I recommend
always using the prefix. It certainly isn't fair, but merely one
of the quirks of using AOL.
If you have a technology question you would like answered, send
it to douglas@welchwrite.com and I will use it as the basis for an upcoming column.
Douglas E. Welch is a freelance writer and computer consultant
in Van Nuys, California. He also writes Career Opportunities, a weekly column on high-tech careers and A Gardener's Notebook. You can find more of Douglas' writing on his web page at: http://www.welchwrite.com/
He can reached via email at douglas@welchwrite.com
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