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BATTLE: //url.tld VS http://url.tld

2 points by adamclayman ↗ HN
Vote for your favorite below. Or upvote if you prefer sharing urls without "http:", and downvote if you prefer keeping "http:" in the picture.

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Can we agree to drop the use of "http://www.google.com", and let browsers and email clients auto-generate urls from "//google.com" instead?

Which do you favor for use in print, email and advertising?

Option A (http://)

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http://google.com

http://facebook.com

http://mint.com

http://news.ycombinator.com

http://voice.google.com

Option B (//)

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//google.com

//facebook.com

//mint.com

//news.ycombinator.com

//voice.google.com

Option C ()

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google.com

facebook.com

mint.com

news.ycombinator.com

voice.google.com

Let's see where the community stands. What barriers exist to shortening the syntax for http and https resources to "//url.tld"?

If Hacker News supports the shift, Web 2.0 might just might support the change.

One proposed measure of spectacular success: If Google Mail staff reading this thread devote development time to prefilling the "//google.com" link destination to "http://google.com" when users highlight and link text that reads "//google.com", and promote this as a flexibility feature to its 350 million active users.

(If Google promotes "//link.com" as a secure simplicity feature, we'll save ourselves googols of keystrokes, and enable enhanced textual clarity and reading speed for urls printed in-line in emails and on paper.)

7 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 28.0 ms ] thread
delwin
The question is irrelevant, there is already a standard. Browsers use http://, dead-tree material uses nothing, and no one uses //, because that's just weird.

Typing in http:// is never necessary, so we're already saving as many keystrokes as possible.

adamtheclayman
Delwin, on the keystroke front, adding support for processing the text "//google.com" as a likely link does not impact users like me who type "google.com" into their URL bar.

I'm not proposing that we lengthen "hipmunk.com" into "//hipmunk.com". Just that we shorten "http://hipmunk.com, where and when it appears, to "//hipmunk.com", or enable support for such shortening in as many major consumer web applications we can collectively reach, through a top-ranked Hacker News story.

//url is already supported by every major browser.

I don't know how to format or title an HN post to attract attention. I'm starting to regret titling this "BATTLE: //url.tld" instead of something more like, "It's 2012. Why do we still need to write http:// to tell a web service we've written a link, when // will do?"

Should this not or never reach the front page, if you or anyone you know has an idea of how to get the short //url proposal somewhere it gets considered for a moment by the webdev collective and YC participants (and aspirants), I'd be greatly appreciative.

//news.ycombinator.com (<- press me, I'm a link)

adamclayman
On Prezi, only http:// links are translated into links. Screen real estate is precious in a powerpoint presentation. Why can't "//link" get translated into a hyperlink?
adamclayman
If you're reading a dense paragraph of text,and you come across a google.com link, your eye does not immediately recognize it as a link. But if you're reading a paragraph and you see a //google.com link... well now, that's a link!

Everything that's new and not normalized with a smiling, attractive face beside it gets written up as weird, until it gets normalized and becomes commonplace.

I'm asking HN: Can we collectively make this "//link.com" syntax not weird?

adamclayman
And should we?

Do you see merit to supporting all three //news.ycombinator.com, news.ycombinator.com and http://news.ycombinator.com on your site as likely hyperlinks?

Consider all the variations of capitalization in the coding community, typified by support for CamelCase, and its variants.

I'm suggesting a mixed-mode url format that distinguishes a url from surrounding text, but without the overhead of http://.

andyzweb
none of these. I would rather see http:domain.tld or just domain.tld