8 ms·

This has nothing to do with gtld, but I think what bothers me most is that domains are in the wrong order. It should be com.ycombinator.news or com.google

pbreit 12y ago
Maybe if you're a computer. But for us humans, google.com makes more sense.
- saraid216 12y ago
  > Maybe if you're a Java programmer. Fixed that for you.
- shurcooL 12y ago
  Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www? And if www.google.com is okay, what's wrong with www.google/stuff. Left to right order.
  - mikeryan 12y ago
    Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www you know there's an actual reason for this? com > google > www "www" is a subdomain of "google" which is a subdomain of the top level domain "com" historically that was a conventional way to separate services (ftp.google.com, www.google.com gopher.google.com)
    - aroman 12y ago
      Are you suggesting that the strategy you describe above wouldn't just as well if the names were reversed?
      - shubb 12y ago
        I think he is guessing that the grandparents thinks that www or 'world wide web' means 'the internet' and should be root. But actually 'web' reveals to the graph of hyperlinks between http/html pages that let you navigate from page to page, server to server. www denotes the host is primarily a http server serving web pages. You could argue it's superfluous these days - if you are typing it in an address bar, you hope it is a http server, and if you are typing it in a ssh prompt, you know it's your ssh server. People add it because it's a convention and some users might get confused if you don't... (it's probably a vhost anyway most of the time)
        dspeyer 12y ago
        It does have one benefit. www.google.com has its IP served from google's dns servers, whereas google.com comes from com's. Google does lots of dns-based load balancing that com doesn't support.
        jeremycole 12y ago
        That's not how it works. com. only serves the nameserver (NS) addresses for example.com., and if they are within the same domain, their IP addresses. It does not serve the rest of the records for example.com. You can see this easily with e.g.: dig -t any google.com. @a.gtld-servers.net. vs. dig -t any google.com. @ns1.google.com. There is no real advantage of having it be 'www' coming from DNS... There is a somewhat more modern problem which is that having a domain be a CNAME (the DNS equivalent of a by-name redirect) means it can't also have MX records and receive mail; the CNAME also ends up "redirecting" everything, including MX lookups. So if your web host offers yourdomain.someawesomehost.com and you decide to point yourdomain.com to it via CNAME, having you@yourdomain.com doesn't work unless yourdomain.someawesomehost.com is configured to receive mail for yourdomain.com.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - mikeryan 12y ago
        Reversed maintains the existing hierarchy but the suggestion was google.com.www which does not.
  - ta82828 12y ago
    hostnames can have more than three components, e.g. "www.ox.ac.uk". So it's either biggest to smallest: "com.google.www" or smallest to biggest: "www.google.com". google.com.www is in neither ascending or descending order. www.google/stuff works now that we have generic TLDs and .google is a TLD, but before that it ignores the possibility of google.net and google.org. This may not be a problem for a unique trademark like google but not all domains are trademarks.
- kszx 12y ago
  Really? com.ycombinator.news seems much more logical and intuitive to me, just like 2015-04-01. Or how about com/ycombinator/news?
  - abalone 12y ago
    Because you're a computer programmer! Human language is all about optimizing for context. Abbreviations, contractions, etc. For humans, most of the time the current year and/or "com" are the default context, so it makes sense to present the most significant differentiating information first. If you think about it, that's also why "www." got dropped.
    - danellis 12y ago
      When I make a phone call, I have a "default context" -- my area code -- but people still seem happy enough with phone numbers that go from most general to most specific.
      - abalone 12y ago
        I'm old enough to remember when people would drop area codes. Long distance was expensive so 95% of the numbers you'd call were local. That being the default context, people would drop the area code in most local situations. There's plenty of archival newspaper ads that demonstrate this. With cell phones and unlimited nationwide calling plans, it's more common to find an assortment of area codes in contact lists these days. What you're describing is not actually a default context. It's just your personal area code. The person next to you might very well have a different one.
        danellis 12y ago
        It's not my "personal area code", it's... well, the area's area code, and it's the default for people in the area. People and businesses locally routinely give their number without the area code, because it's implied and doesn't need to be dialed. Even my cellphone has the default context of the area in which the SIM card was bought. So I'm not sure what "old enough to remember" means when it's still true today. 95% of the numbers I call now are local businesses, so I only dial seven digits. I don't know, maybe you're from the future or something.
- fragsworth 12y ago
  Only because you've gotten used to it. Right now you have to learn that [domain]/[filepath] is a thing. If it was done in the same direction as folders, you wouldn't even have to know anything about domains.
- moogleii 12y ago
  Eh, that's debatable. Could be confirmation bias because we're just used to it being that way for the last x decades. Fairly sure that if I asked my computer illiterate grandma which made more sense, google.com or com.google, the answer would be "neither." Heck, my parents only add www or com simply "because". There's no rational reason from their perspective to do so other than that it may not work otherwise. If I had originally taught them com.google vs google.com, they'd be none the wiser (assuming either way actually worked). I actually suspect if we started with a clean slate, it would make more sense to start with "more generic/less detail" to "less generic/more detail." Urls after the domain already do that (well, organized sites, do), e.g. www.site.com/cleaningsupplies/clorox Then we could have (expanded for example): company.google organization.charitynavigator uk.company.google xxx.whoa (for those that remember the proposal for a xxx tld) But there's probably a technical reason for it being the way it is that I'm not aware of or something.
  - balabaster 12y ago
    Er... to me, if I really stop and think hard about it, none of these make sense. If I really wanted it to make sense, I'd just type "Google", "RBC", "BBC" - the brand name and it would figure out the rest for me. If the site was secure, my browser would figure that out and tell me it was secure. If the site wasn't secure, it would figure that out too and warn me as such. Of course, I realize that this is a tall ask given that you have conflicting brands around the world. Perhaps there should be some linguistically obvious [to the average non-I.T. person] way to differentiate between conflicting brands... I feel like the most obvious should be that we should never have to negotiate security by typing HTTPS... that should be the default state, falling back to HTTP only if HTTPS was unavailable and a warning should be given to the user. The average user [indeed any user] should never have to "look for HTTPS" or "look for the padlock". The whole browser UI should be more intuitive than that - the user should be able to look at the browser window and infer that communication with that site is not secure. I'm not sure what the address structure should be... perhaps something like(?) ISO_COUNTRY_CODE/REGISTERED_COMPANY_NAME/SITE_NAME/PATH/TO/RESOURCE Examples: - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/ABOUT-US [Brand Information Page] - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/ONLINE-STORE/HOME/FURNITURE/BEDROOM/KIDS/BEDS/PIRATE-SHIP-BED [Catalog Item] - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/STORES/ACOCKS-GREEN [For local information] - US/COMPANY/AMAZON [Brand Home Page] - US/COMPANY/AMAZON/STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS [Catalog Item] - US/CHARITY/LIVESTRONG [Brand Home Page] - CA/CHURCH/UNITED/SASKATOON [Localized Home Page] Perhaps a global brand such as Amazon or Facebook wouldn't even need a country code...or it could be figured out by an algorithm based on the user's context: FACEBOOK could map to UK/COMPANY/FACEBOOK for a person in the UK or US/COMPANY/FACEBOOK for a person in the U.S. The user could override the location by manually typing the address. If the user's IP address belonged to Amazon in the US, then they could type in just the site and resource address and the rest of the address could be construed from their context: Typing in STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS would automatically be understood as: US/COMPANY/AMAZON/STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS. For a residential user, their IP would be assigned to the block for their country, so any sites not explicitly specified would infer a site within their own country. If the country code isn't known, then some algorithm could attempt to figure it out. If it was ambiguous, then the user could be presented with search results by a preconfigured [or their favorite] search engine. Anyway - as Tim Berners Lee says... it's too late now. Until someone sets about re-imagining the entire infrastructure that is today's internet, we're stuck with what we've got.
- mrb 12y ago
  That's just because you are used to it. But <tld>.<domain> actually makes more sense for multiple reasons: - That's how phone numbers work, the most significant part of the number is first (<country-code> <area-code> <local-number>) so the most significant part (TLD) should come first in domain names. Users like systems that look like other systems they are already used to. - <tld>.<domain> would help thwart phishing attacks as most users read left-to-right, so they see right away when the domain is incorrect. Compare this to "google.com.phishing.com" which tricks users because they stop reading after they see "google.com..." - When you read or hear "go to com.myawesomedomain" you know a domain name is being mentioned as soon as you hear "com.". It is not always obvious otherwise (you have to use specific language like "browse to").
  - baddox 12y ago
    How about US postal addresses? <House number> <Street> <City> <State> <ZIP code> Except for ZIP code, the address elements are ordered in descending specificity.
    - Larrikin 12y ago
      Addresses in Japan are written in exactly the opposite order, with the post code being written at the top of envelope followed by the prefecture, state, etc. Its simply what you are used to.
  - robbrown451 12y ago
    If it was com.something you have to type the com first. If "something" is first, you by the time you get to "som" it will probably have something.com in the dropdown list. I would say its easiest if the most variable part is first, not only for autofill but for the way I think about it. When you talk about "most significant" you mean the "largest" category. To me the actual most significant is the part that identifies the most unique thing you are typing in, and that tends to be the domain.
    - erikano 12y ago
      Modern web browsers will complete from any start position in an URL (and some also from the title of the document, I think). E.g. if I have visited the Wikipedia article on irish setters and I start typing irish, it will suggest that article. In the same fashion, if the URL was com.example and you typed exa, it should suggest com.example.
- anentropic 12y ago
  arguably the .com is as superfluous as the now-omitted www.
  - Aldo_MX 12y ago
    It may be superfluous, but it has a dedicated button in my mobile phone, which helps me type less
gilgoomesh 12y ago
That puts "com" first as you read it, despite the fact that it conveys no useful information. Top-level domains have rarely been used as the ontological category they were intended to be. They are little more than flavor-text that is annoyingly required for uniqueness purposes. I think they rightfully belong in the position of least significance.
- bhaumik 12y ago
  Sure, but "www" much less significant.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - danellis 12y ago
    In an ideal world, 'www' would be superfluous. Your browser would know what server to contact for the WWW service by requesting SRV records for the bare domain.
- awalton 12y ago
  > That puts "com" first as you read it, despite the fact that it conveys no useful information. They are little more than flavor-text that is annoyingly required for uniqueness purposes. Except that's not true at all. The reason they became "flavor-text" was because they appeared to be tacked on to the end for no reason other than uniqueness. Previously existing organizational schema worked for decades with proper categorization: Usenet is a wonderful example of just how powerful it is. Had URLs been defined correctly, "com" would have immediately told the user "a commercial entity", "org" would have immediately meant "an organization", "net" probably wouldn't exist, and these newer TLDs like "google", "audio", "apps" would have made a hell of a lot more sense.
  - kowdermeister 12y ago
    But nowadays TLD-s have little relation to the content category of the domain, look at the .com distortion for example. It's a valid claim that TLD-s are not really useful information. If you look at the current domain structure it's more like a file extension analogy.
bshimmin 12y ago
What you describe is clearly familiar to any Java programmers out there, but it actually made me think of UUCP mail routing, which used to be a bit like that - the hosts would go from left to right, separated by bangs, and ending in the user. Some details here: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node192.html http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node192.html What we have now is obviously much friendlier to the end user, given it has no reliance on remembering or understanding the network topology!
- danellis 12y ago
  It's more like the old JANET domain names, that looked like UK.AC.MAN.CS.R5.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    Ah yes, I remember those (dimly!)... though if you were sending mail to them it was still `user@` at the start. I don't remember when JANET reversed their ordering to match everyone else's - mid-nineties, maybe?
    - danellis 12y ago
      Wikipedia says it started hosting IP traffic in 1991, so that's probably when they started using DNS.
fragsworth 12y ago
Files, and the ordering of folder hierarchy from left to right, was developed by Unix in the 1970s. Domain names (DNS) were developed in 1985 to locate things on the Internet, entirely separately, with the opposite hierarchical ordering. The convention of locating files on a system identified by a domain name wasn't developed until 1992 and standardized in 1994 as a URL. As a result, we have two hierarchical orderings for two separate things, because they were merged later on.
- baddox 12y ago
  Note that postal addresses, at least in the United States, also order lines in descending specificity. I presume that long predates the Internet, and I wonder if it is in any way related.
justincormack 12y ago
"I have to say that now I regret that the syntax is so clumsy. I would like http://www.example.com/foo/bar/baz http://www.example.com/foo/bar/baz to be just written http:com/example/foo/bar/baz where the client would figure out that www.example.com existed and was the server to contact. But it is too late now." Tim Berners Lee[1] [1] http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html
- darkerside 12y ago
  Yes, now it is too late, since gTLDs have been rolled out in such a haphazard way. Right of first refusal on gTLDs should have been granted to the owner of the most highly trafficked domain (between .com, .org, .net, etc.), or worst case, been auctioned off between parties who already owned that domain on one of the TLDs. That would have meant the primary owner of a gTLD like 'google' would be google.com, instead of a random domain squatter.
  - CydeWeys 12y ago
    Right of first refusal WAS given to trademark holders. .google is owned by Google, not by some random domain squatter (whatever gave you that idea?). Trademark vetting is part of the ICANN application process for a new gTLD. No one else other than Google would've been allowed to have the .google gTLD. There are plenty of brand name gTLDs that were never delegated simply because that company didn't want it, and no one else could have it.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- jameshart 12y ago
  Imagine how hard it would have been to untangle cross-site security if he had followed that scheme. As it is, we already have to have arbitrary restrictions on where in the domain hierarchy you can root things like cookies (e.g. if you're on www.example.com you can set cookies on example.com, but if you're on example.co.uk you can't set them on co.uk)
nothrabannosir 12y ago
This is the single biggest UI mistake for security in browsers. How do I explain to my grandmother when a banking site is safe? "Yeah, so, it has to start with 'https://' https://', but only at the beginning, and then it has to END with "thebank.com", OR, before the third slash (so not the ones after https:// https://). So find the third /: is there no third /? Then it must end with thebank.com. Is there one? Then before that it must have thebank.com. Yeah it's the part that's blacker! Exactly. It's not super clear but.... Ok forget it. Click the padlock and read the name of the company. And make sure it's from the same country, at least."
- balabaster 12y ago
  Tell her as I tell mine: The security behind the internet has at this point proven to be so fallible that it may as well not even be called security. The advice we I.T. folk have been preaching all these years [but quietly ignoring ourselves] is so much more profound than even we thought. You're safer to continue taking your bankbook to the same teller at the same bank you've been dealing with your whole life and continue to hope the bank doesn't get robbed while you're in there - because you're less likely to get killed in a bank robbery than you are crossing the road to get to the bank... both of which are infinitely less likely than your security getting compromised on the internet and your information being leaked to some hacker forum and ending up on the black market - regardless of the bank's laughable promise to you that your information is "safe and secure." It also has the additional upside of getting you out of the house, interacting with other people and keeping the human spirit alive instead of sitting cooped up inside all day.
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  In theory this is the problem that EV SSL Certificates solve. [🔒 Bank Entity Inc.] https://yourbank.tld https://yourbank.tld
teddyuk 12y ago
why bother with .com at all - it is meant to be a global company but lots of us companies just use it for themselves (global or not) - just because the dns rules were made a long time ago doesn't mean we need to keep them today

pbreit 12y ago

Maybe if you're a computer. But for us humans, google.com makes more sense.

saraid216 12y ago
> Maybe if you're a Java programmer. Fixed that for you.
shurcooL 12y ago
Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www? And if www.google.com is okay, what's wrong with www.google/stuff. Left to right order.
- mikeryan 12y ago
  Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www you know there's an actual reason for this? com > google > www "www" is a subdomain of "google" which is a subdomain of the top level domain "com" historically that was a conventional way to separate services (ftp.google.com, www.google.com gopher.google.com)
  - aroman 12y ago
    Are you suggesting that the strategy you describe above wouldn't just as well if the names were reversed?
    - shubb 12y ago
      I think he is guessing that the grandparents thinks that www or 'world wide web' means 'the internet' and should be root. But actually 'web' reveals to the graph of hyperlinks between http/html pages that let you navigate from page to page, server to server. www denotes the host is primarily a http server serving web pages. You could argue it's superfluous these days - if you are typing it in an address bar, you hope it is a http server, and if you are typing it in a ssh prompt, you know it's your ssh server. People add it because it's a convention and some users might get confused if you don't... (it's probably a vhost anyway most of the time)
      - dspeyer 12y ago
        It does have one benefit. www.google.com has its IP served from google's dns servers, whereas google.com comes from com's. Google does lots of dns-based load balancing that com doesn't support.
        jeremycole 12y ago
        That's not how it works. com. only serves the nameserver (NS) addresses for example.com., and if they are within the same domain, their IP addresses. It does not serve the rest of the records for example.com. You can see this easily with e.g.: dig -t any google.com. @a.gtld-servers.net. vs. dig -t any google.com. @ns1.google.com. There is no real advantage of having it be 'www' coming from DNS... There is a somewhat more modern problem which is that having a domain be a CNAME (the DNS equivalent of a by-name redirect) means it can't also have MX records and receive mail; the CNAME also ends up "redirecting" everything, including MX lookups. So if your web host offers yourdomain.someawesomehost.com and you decide to point yourdomain.com to it via CNAME, having you@yourdomain.com doesn't work unless yourdomain.someawesomehost.com is configured to receive mail for yourdomain.com.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - mikeryan 12y ago
      Reversed maintains the existing hierarchy but the suggestion was google.com.www which does not.
- ta82828 12y ago
  hostnames can have more than three components, e.g. "www.ox.ac.uk". So it's either biggest to smallest: "com.google.www" or smallest to biggest: "www.google.com". google.com.www is in neither ascending or descending order. www.google/stuff works now that we have generic TLDs and .google is a TLD, but before that it ignores the possibility of google.net and google.org. This may not be a problem for a unique trademark like google but not all domains are trademarks.
kszx 12y ago
Really? com.ycombinator.news seems much more logical and intuitive to me, just like 2015-04-01. Or how about com/ycombinator/news?
- abalone 12y ago
  Because you're a computer programmer! Human language is all about optimizing for context. Abbreviations, contractions, etc. For humans, most of the time the current year and/or "com" are the default context, so it makes sense to present the most significant differentiating information first. If you think about it, that's also why "www." got dropped.
  - danellis 12y ago
    When I make a phone call, I have a "default context" -- my area code -- but people still seem happy enough with phone numbers that go from most general to most specific.
    - abalone 12y ago
      I'm old enough to remember when people would drop area codes. Long distance was expensive so 95% of the numbers you'd call were local. That being the default context, people would drop the area code in most local situations. There's plenty of archival newspaper ads that demonstrate this. With cell phones and unlimited nationwide calling plans, it's more common to find an assortment of area codes in contact lists these days. What you're describing is not actually a default context. It's just your personal area code. The person next to you might very well have a different one.
      - danellis 12y ago
        It's not my "personal area code", it's... well, the area's area code, and it's the default for people in the area. People and businesses locally routinely give their number without the area code, because it's implied and doesn't need to be dialed. Even my cellphone has the default context of the area in which the SIM card was bought. So I'm not sure what "old enough to remember" means when it's still true today. 95% of the numbers I call now are local businesses, so I only dial seven digits. I don't know, maybe you're from the future or something.
fragsworth 12y ago
Only because you've gotten used to it. Right now you have to learn that [domain]/[filepath] is a thing. If it was done in the same direction as folders, you wouldn't even have to know anything about domains.
moogleii 12y ago
Eh, that's debatable. Could be confirmation bias because we're just used to it being that way for the last x decades. Fairly sure that if I asked my computer illiterate grandma which made more sense, google.com or com.google, the answer would be "neither." Heck, my parents only add www or com simply "because". There's no rational reason from their perspective to do so other than that it may not work otherwise. If I had originally taught them com.google vs google.com, they'd be none the wiser (assuming either way actually worked). I actually suspect if we started with a clean slate, it would make more sense to start with "more generic/less detail" to "less generic/more detail." Urls after the domain already do that (well, organized sites, do), e.g. www.site.com/cleaningsupplies/clorox Then we could have (expanded for example): company.google organization.charitynavigator uk.company.google xxx.whoa (for those that remember the proposal for a xxx tld) But there's probably a technical reason for it being the way it is that I'm not aware of or something.
- balabaster 12y ago
  Er... to me, if I really stop and think hard about it, none of these make sense. If I really wanted it to make sense, I'd just type "Google", "RBC", "BBC" - the brand name and it would figure out the rest for me. If the site was secure, my browser would figure that out and tell me it was secure. If the site wasn't secure, it would figure that out too and warn me as such. Of course, I realize that this is a tall ask given that you have conflicting brands around the world. Perhaps there should be some linguistically obvious [to the average non-I.T. person] way to differentiate between conflicting brands... I feel like the most obvious should be that we should never have to negotiate security by typing HTTPS... that should be the default state, falling back to HTTP only if HTTPS was unavailable and a warning should be given to the user. The average user [indeed any user] should never have to "look for HTTPS" or "look for the padlock". The whole browser UI should be more intuitive than that - the user should be able to look at the browser window and infer that communication with that site is not secure. I'm not sure what the address structure should be... perhaps something like(?) ISO_COUNTRY_CODE/REGISTERED_COMPANY_NAME/SITE_NAME/PATH/TO/RESOURCE Examples: - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/ABOUT-US [Brand Information Page] - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/ONLINE-STORE/HOME/FURNITURE/BEDROOM/KIDS/BEDS/PIRATE-SHIP-BED [Catalog Item] - UK/COMPANY/ARGOS/STORES/ACOCKS-GREEN [For local information] - US/COMPANY/AMAZON [Brand Home Page] - US/COMPANY/AMAZON/STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS [Catalog Item] - US/CHARITY/LIVESTRONG [Brand Home Page] - CA/CHURCH/UNITED/SASKATOON [Localized Home Page] Perhaps a global brand such as Amazon or Facebook wouldn't even need a country code...or it could be figured out by an algorithm based on the user's context: FACEBOOK could map to UK/COMPANY/FACEBOOK for a person in the UK or US/COMPANY/FACEBOOK for a person in the U.S. The user could override the location by manually typing the address. If the user's IP address belonged to Amazon in the US, then they could type in just the site and resource address and the rest of the address could be construed from their context: Typing in STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS would automatically be understood as: US/COMPANY/AMAZON/STORE/ELECTRONICS/DVD/LORD-OF-THE-RINGS. For a residential user, their IP would be assigned to the block for their country, so any sites not explicitly specified would infer a site within their own country. If the country code isn't known, then some algorithm could attempt to figure it out. If it was ambiguous, then the user could be presented with search results by a preconfigured [or their favorite] search engine. Anyway - as Tim Berners Lee says... it's too late now. Until someone sets about re-imagining the entire infrastructure that is today's internet, we're stuck with what we've got.
mrb 12y ago
That's just because you are used to it. But <tld>.<domain> actually makes more sense for multiple reasons: - That's how phone numbers work, the most significant part of the number is first (<country-code> <area-code> <local-number>) so the most significant part (TLD) should come first in domain names. Users like systems that look like other systems they are already used to. - <tld>.<domain> would help thwart phishing attacks as most users read left-to-right, so they see right away when the domain is incorrect. Compare this to "google.com.phishing.com" which tricks users because they stop reading after they see "google.com..." - When you read or hear "go to com.myawesomedomain" you know a domain name is being mentioned as soon as you hear "com.". It is not always obvious otherwise (you have to use specific language like "browse to").
- baddox 12y ago
  How about US postal addresses? <House number> <Street> <City> <State> <ZIP code> Except for ZIP code, the address elements are ordered in descending specificity.
  - Larrikin 12y ago
    Addresses in Japan are written in exactly the opposite order, with the post code being written at the top of envelope followed by the prefecture, state, etc. Its simply what you are used to.
- robbrown451 12y ago
  If it was com.something you have to type the com first. If "something" is first, you by the time you get to "som" it will probably have something.com in the dropdown list. I would say its easiest if the most variable part is first, not only for autofill but for the way I think about it. When you talk about "most significant" you mean the "largest" category. To me the actual most significant is the part that identifies the most unique thing you are typing in, and that tends to be the domain.
  - erikano 12y ago
    Modern web browsers will complete from any start position in an URL (and some also from the title of the document, I think). E.g. if I have visited the Wikipedia article on irish setters and I start typing irish, it will suggest that article. In the same fashion, if the URL was com.example and you typed exa, it should suggest com.example.
anentropic 12y ago
arguably the .com is as superfluous as the now-omitted www.
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  It may be superfluous, but it has a dedicated button in my mobile phone, which helps me type less

gilgoomesh 12y ago

That puts "com" first as you read it, despite the fact that it conveys no useful information. Top-level domains have rarely been used as the ontological category they were intended to be. They are little more than flavor-text that is annoyingly required for uniqueness purposes. I think they rightfully belong in the position of least significance.

bhaumik 12y ago
Sure, but "www" much less significant.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- danellis 12y ago
  In an ideal world, 'www' would be superfluous. Your browser would know what server to contact for the WWW service by requesting SRV records for the bare domain.
awalton 12y ago
> That puts "com" first as you read it, despite the fact that it conveys no useful information. They are little more than flavor-text that is annoyingly required for uniqueness purposes. Except that's not true at all. The reason they became "flavor-text" was because they appeared to be tacked on to the end for no reason other than uniqueness. Previously existing organizational schema worked for decades with proper categorization: Usenet is a wonderful example of just how powerful it is. Had URLs been defined correctly, "com" would have immediately told the user "a commercial entity", "org" would have immediately meant "an organization", "net" probably wouldn't exist, and these newer TLDs like "google", "audio", "apps" would have made a hell of a lot more sense.
- kowdermeister 12y ago
  But nowadays TLD-s have little relation to the content category of the domain, look at the .com distortion for example. It's a valid claim that TLD-s are not really useful information. If you look at the current domain structure it's more like a file extension analogy.

bshimmin 12y ago

What you describe is clearly familiar to any Java programmers out there, but it actually made me think of UUCP mail routing, which used to be a bit like that - the hosts would go from left to right, separated by bangs, and ending in the user. Some details here: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node192.html http://www.tldp.org/LDP/nag/node192.html What we have now is obviously much friendlier to the end user, given it has no reliance on remembering or understanding the network topology!

danellis 12y ago
It's more like the old JANET domain names, that looked like UK.AC.MAN.CS.R5.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  Ah yes, I remember those (dimly!)... though if you were sending mail to them it was still `user@` at the start. I don't remember when JANET reversed their ordering to match everyone else's - mid-nineties, maybe?
  - danellis 12y ago
    Wikipedia says it started hosting IP traffic in 1991, so that's probably when they started using DNS.

fragsworth 12y ago

Files, and the ordering of folder hierarchy from left to right, was developed by Unix in the 1970s. Domain names (DNS) were developed in 1985 to locate things on the Internet, entirely separately, with the opposite hierarchical ordering. The convention of locating files on a system identified by a domain name wasn't developed until 1992 and standardized in 1994 as a URL. As a result, we have two hierarchical orderings for two separate things, because they were merged later on.

baddox 12y ago
Note that postal addresses, at least in the United States, also order lines in descending specificity. I presume that long predates the Internet, and I wonder if it is in any way related.

justincormack 12y ago

"I have to say that now I regret that the syntax is so clumsy. I would like http://www.example.com/foo/bar/baz http://www.example.com/foo/bar/baz to be just written http:com/example/foo/bar/baz where the client would figure out that www.example.com existed and was the server to contact. But it is too late now." Tim Berners Lee[1] [1] http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html

darkerside 12y ago
Yes, now it is too late, since gTLDs have been rolled out in such a haphazard way. Right of first refusal on gTLDs should have been granted to the owner of the most highly trafficked domain (between .com, .org, .net, etc.), or worst case, been auctioned off between parties who already owned that domain on one of the TLDs. That would have meant the primary owner of a gTLD like 'google' would be google.com, instead of a random domain squatter.
- CydeWeys 12y ago
  Right of first refusal WAS given to trademark holders. .google is owned by Google, not by some random domain squatter (whatever gave you that idea?). Trademark vetting is part of the ICANN application process for a new gTLD. No one else other than Google would've been allowed to have the .google gTLD. There are plenty of brand name gTLDs that were never delegated simply because that company didn't want it, and no one else could have it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jameshart 12y ago
Imagine how hard it would have been to untangle cross-site security if he had followed that scheme. As it is, we already have to have arbitrary restrictions on where in the domain hierarchy you can root things like cookies (e.g. if you're on www.example.com you can set cookies on example.com, but if you're on example.co.uk you can't set them on co.uk)

nothrabannosir 12y ago

This is the single biggest UI mistake for security in browsers. How do I explain to my grandmother when a banking site is safe? "Yeah, so, it has to start with 'https://' https://', but only at the beginning, and then it has to END with "thebank.com", OR, before the third slash (so not the ones after https:// https://). So find the third /: is there no third /? Then it must end with thebank.com. Is there one? Then before that it must have thebank.com. Yeah it's the part that's blacker! Exactly. It's not super clear but.... Ok forget it. Click the padlock and read the name of the company. And make sure it's from the same country, at least."

balabaster 12y ago
Tell her as I tell mine: The security behind the internet has at this point proven to be so fallible that it may as well not even be called security. The advice we I.T. folk have been preaching all these years [but quietly ignoring ourselves] is so much more profound than even we thought. You're safer to continue taking your bankbook to the same teller at the same bank you've been dealing with your whole life and continue to hope the bank doesn't get robbed while you're in there - because you're less likely to get killed in a bank robbery than you are crossing the road to get to the bank... both of which are infinitely less likely than your security getting compromised on the internet and your information being leaked to some hacker forum and ending up on the black market - regardless of the bank's laughable promise to you that your information is "safe and secure." It also has the additional upside of getting you out of the house, interacting with other people and keeping the human spirit alive instead of sitting cooped up inside all day.
Aldo_MX 12y ago
In theory this is the problem that EV SSL Certificates solve. [🔒 Bank Entity Inc.] https://yourbank.tld https://yourbank.tld

teddyuk 12y ago

why bother with .com at all - it is meant to be a global company but lots of us companies just use it for themselves (global or not) - just because the dns rules were made a long time ago doesn't mean we need to keep them today