3 ms·
URLs are an utter failure, normal people don't understand them, the only protocol they are ever used for is HTTP, special characters are a mess, IPv6 turns the
by stefan_ 7y ago
URLs are an utter failure, normal people don't understand them, the only protocol they are ever used for is HTTP, special characters are a mess, IPv6 turns the insanity up to 11. The one other use of URLs has been tricking unwitting users into launching vulnerable applications with malicious input, because applications registering themselves for protocols was a thing once added, then never critically thought about, ever.
URLs are simply not the forward case.
- zzo38computer 7y agoURLs are used for protocols other than HTTP(S), although it is most common with HTTP(S). Other URI schemes are sometimes used where a URL is needed to make a link to something else (such as in a HTML document, or a Gopher menu item that links to something using a protocol which Gopher does not support linking to (HTTP being one of these protocols), or opening local files or other stuff in a web browser, or for some uses in RDF). But I agree that IPv6 makes it messy. (I had my own idea which is version 10 (numbers 7, 8, 9 are unusable) which uses the same format like version 4 but with sixteen octets instead of four, and some other differences too.)