19 ms·
Why does www matter?
by soared 8y ago
Why does www matter?
- Klonoar 8y agoSame exact reason that api.domain.com or beta.domain.com matters - you're on a subdomain, not the root domain. That the internet and world at large made www the "kind of" root domain in many cases is an unfortunate thing, but I've not seen a modern server configuration that doesn't handle this case by default.
- meowface 8y agoBut when using HTTP(S), you nearly always expect the "www." domain and the root domain to host the same content. It's very, very rare that this isn't the case. Chrome appears to be hiding "m.", too, which is unfortunate (as would api. or beta. being hidden), but "www." is such boilerplate for HTTP at this point that I don't think it matters whether it's displayed or not.
- jlarocco 8y agoI think it matters, quite a bit actually. My expectation as a user is that the URL I see in the bar is the URL of the site I'm visiting. If it's not accurate, then why show it at all?
- meowface 8y ago>If it's not accurate, then why show it at all? Don't give them any ideas. They've been moving towards this path for a long time. Full paths being hidden from URLs could be up next.
- markovbot 8y agoBecause the second level domain is far more important than the subdomain. The second level. www.example.com and example.com usually have the same contents, but are always controlled by the same group.
- meowface 8y agoExactly; wish I had added that to my original point.
- hunter2_ 8y agoIt's not true that the second level and third level are always controlled by the same group (most of .uk for example). You can put an SOA record anywhere.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- markovbot 8y agoAre they not respecting the public suffix list?
- jlarocco 8y agoBut the entity that controls the second level domain always controls all of its subdomains, not just www. Historically www has been a special case, but that's not a requirement and that's on the decline. It seems like the confusion this change causes negates any benefit it could have.
- archgoon 8y ago> It's very, very rare that this isn't the case Those tend to be the cases when I care very much.
- manigandham 8y agoIf it doesnt matter, why even remove it?
- meowface 8y agoBecause it's added visual noise that 99% of end users don't care about and don't need to care about.
- manigandham 8y agoThis is just going in a circle. If they don't care about it then it makes no difference. A few characters in an address bar that they pay no attention to is not significant noise. Meanwhile the people that do care have less information.
- meowface 8y agoThey don't need to care about checking whether it's there or not or seeing it at all. But in a general sense, users do care about reduced clutter and aesthetics, and this is a way of improving aesthetics and creating a more consistent URL bar. It's a tiny bit more consistency and a tiny bit less clutter, but it's not nothing. The users who truly care can just click the URL bar. (Someone said you also have to press the left arrow, which if true seems like a bad decision. I would agree the full URL should always be visible whenever the cursor focus is in the URL bar.)
- stronglikedan 8y agoQuoted from a comment in the linked site: > How will you distinguish http://www.pool.ntp.org http://www.pool.ntp.org vs http://pool.ntp.org http://pool.ntp.org ? > One takes you to the website about the project, the other goes to a random ntp server.
- taberiand 8y agoThis is so obvious, it's confusing that it's even a question. Hiding www doesn't make things simpler, it just hides complexity.
- Already__Taken 8y agoCurrently have a test domain for junk. example.com is broken but www.example.com works fine. I come across enough sites were one or the other is broken I'd call it important.