August 2016
Intermediate to advanced
66 pages
1h 10m
English
Content preview from Building Web Apps that Work Everywhere
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Chapter 2. URLs
The humble hyperlink is one of the most powerful aspects of the Web. This ability to connect to any resource on the Web through a URL is what makes the everywhere web possible. As developers, we should aim to expose URLs that are stable and easy to understand for our users.
In 1996 the creator of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, drafted “Universal Resource Identifiers—Axioms of Web Architecture”. This document consists of several axioms of URL design, many technical in nature; but the first (and arguably most important) is universality. By Berners-Lee’s definition, “any resource anywhere can be given a URI” and “any resource of significance should be given a URI” (emphasis mine). By conforming to these expectations of the Web we make it easier for our users to share and interact with it.
URL Versus URI
For the purposes of this chapter, I’ll be using the term URL; however, many quotes cited will use the term URI. Wikipedia helpfully clarifies the difference between these two terms:
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), commonly informally termed a web address... is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably. A URL implies the means to access an indicated resource, which is not true of every URI.
URL Permanence
What makes a cool URI? A cool URI is one which does not change. What sorts ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.