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How the URL Was Built

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Re: How the URL Was Built

#2
I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet.

Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

Re: How the URL Was Built

#3
post #2

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls

Re: How the URL Was Built

#4
Is there a character to demark the end of a url?

If I write into my smartphone notes a url, I prefer to write something like:

Http://google.com/search?q=How to bake cakes$

Than

Http://google.com/search?q=How+to+bake+cakes

iOS Notes treats the second one as a URL and the first one partially as a URL

Re: How the URL Was Built

#5
post #2

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls

Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway

Re: How the URL Was Built

#6
post #2

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

It might be. Many things that use domain names do reverse them. See [0] and [1] for some examples. For many systems, reversing domain names is better, so that is presumably why they do it, because it makes more sense to do it that way for those systems. (It might also help when indexing anything related to domain names; you will want the broadest part first, so that when you search by prefix, you will find anything in that domain and its subdomains.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_name_notation

[1] (My own "Unusenet" specification also uses reverse domain names in NNTP newsgroup names; they specify where the newsgroup originated (not necessarily the same server you are accessing them from), and are used to avoid namespace collisions.)

Re: How the URL Was Built

#7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls

Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway

Much prefer the first letter I type into a browser bar be one in 26 letters, not 3 at best for most of the internet. Would make random tld's in oppressive countries somehow even more desirable than they already are.

It's a silly idea in the age of url suggestions. I can reach most things I want on the internet with 2 key presses. Everything common in one.

N: Hacker News

C: Cloud Console

M: Gmail

R: Reddit

X: Well you get the idea

Re: How the URL Was Built

#8
post #2

I often wish that the schema around domain names was reversed, to reflect something closer to Usenet. Instead of news.ycombinator.com we would use com.ycombinator.news, similar to how a news group might be rec.arts.punkrock or comp.os.linux. This makes more logical sense to me, as you start from the broadest on the left (tld) and work your way to the most granular part (the path, query, or fragment of the resource).

At the time the DNS was being designed, there was some discussion of this, and at least one person was outraged we were doing it the "wrong way." I don't remember the arguments. I think it had something to do with putting the least significant component first being considered more natural. DNS came along a couple years after Usenet switched from a flat to heirarchical name space.

Re: How the URL Was Built

#9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway

Much prefer the first letter I type into a browser bar be one in 26 letters, not 3 at best for most of the internet. Would make random tld's in oppressive countries somehow even more desirable than they already are. It's a silly idea in the age of url suggestions. I can reach most things I want on the internet with 2 key presses. Everything common in one. N: Hacker News C: Cloud Console M: Gmail R: Reddit X: Well you…

In this hypothetical where the host name starts with the TLD, I think you could assume browsers would change the way this works, because it is obviously broken lol

Re: How the URL Was Built

#10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes more sense but we’d have too many urls starting with com; it would be a bit of a cognitive waste. When the rotaty phone was around more important areas were startig with low digits to save on dialing time. Perhaps a similar type of consideration was used for the current form of urls

Why is it an issue to have too many urls starting with com? We type those at the end anyway

I thought we just press Ctrl+Enter so we don't have to type `.com`. It would feel weird to have that fill in a prefix instead of a suffix, as one's text caret is typically at the end of what you typed so its cognitively similar to performing an insert than an append currently...
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