What is a URL ?
A URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, is the location of a file on the Web. When you type the address of a Web page into your browser, you are typing a URL. The most common format of a URL is illustrated by the URL of this page: http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/101/url101.html. Here is a description of each part of the URL. (glossary: IP address) http:// The first portion of the URL (http) designates the protocol that is used to locate the file or resource on the Web. A protocol is a standardized means of communication among machines across a network. Protocols allow data to be taken apart for faster transmission, transmitted, and then reassembled at the destination in the correct order. Here, http represents the HyperText Transfer Protocol, which is used to transfer Web pages across the Internet to Web browsers such as Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, or Lynx. Other common protocols include https (for secure Web pages the S stands for “secure”), ftp (file transfer protocol), and news (fo
uniform resource locator universal resource locator URLs are the Internet equivalent of addresses. How do they work? Like other types of addresses, they move from the general to the specific (from zip code to recipient, so to speak). Take this URL, for example: http://www.cnet.com/Resources/index.html What are SGML and HTML? Documents on the World Wide Web are written in a simple “markup language” called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. When you point your Web browser to a URL, the browser interprets the HTML commands embedded in the page and uses them to format the page’s text and graphic elements. HTML commands cover many types of text formatting (bold and italic text, lists, headline fonts in various sizes, and so on), and also have the ability to include graphics and other nontext elements. How can I search through ALL web sites? Several people have written robots which create indexes of web sites — including sites which have not arranged to be mentioned in the ne
