Surf the Web: Understanding Web Addresses

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Think of the World Wide Web as a vast collection of electronic files stored on millions of computers all around the world. Hypertext links these files together. Uniform Resource Locators or URLs are the addresses used to locate the files. The information contained in a URL gives you the ability to jump from one web page to another with just a click of your mouse. When you type a URL into your browser or click on a hypertext link, your browser sends a request to a remote computer, called a web server, to download one or more files. Every URL is unique and identifies one specific file. What does a typical URL look like? Here are a few examples: http://www.learnthenet.com The home page for Learn the Net. ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/ A directory of files at MIT available for downloading. news:rec.gardens.roses A newsgroup on rose gardening. http://blogs.reuters.com/soccer A blog about soccer. The first part of a URL (before the two slashes) tells you the type of resource or method of access at that address. For example: http - a hypertext document or directory ftp - a file available for downloading or a directory of these files news - a newsgroup file - a file located on a local drive, for instance, the hard drive of your computer The second part is typically the address of the computer where the data or service is located. Additional parts may specify the name of a file, the port to connect to, or the text to search for in a database. Next Page  Learn the Net (www.learnthenet.com) is Copyright 1996-2008. Michael Lerner Productions. All Rights Reserved.