Since websites are considered resources, and every website the world
over has a unique address per a uniform addressing scheme, “Uniform
Resource Locator” (formerly Universal Resource Locator) or URL,
is a fancy name for website address. A synonym that is actually more
precise but less well-known is URI, or Uniform Resource Identifier. The
term “URI” developed after URL had already gained widespread public use;
hence URI is used by those involved in Internet development, standards
and protocols, while URL is the prevalent term outside those circles.
A Web
browser is software used to cruise the World Wide Web. Every browser
has a URL window where the address of the currently viewed webpage is
displayed. Clicking on a hyperlink
within a webpage will direct the browser to a new URL or Web address,
changing the text inside the URL window. In tabbed
browsing the active tab’s address will show in the browser’s URL
window. A website address can also be manually typed or pasted into the
URL field.
It’s a good idea to be at least marginally familiar with what a
website address looks like. Common webpages start with http://
for "HyperText
Transfer Protocol". Pages that start with http:// are not encrypted, so
all information that passes between your computer and the Internet can
be “seen” by eavesdroppers. For this reason it is unwise to enter
personal information into a webpage that starts with http:// in the URL
window.
If you are about to enter personal information into a webpage, first
check that the URL starts with https://. The extra “s”
stands for “secure” and indicates the information exchanged between your
computer and the Internet will be encrypted, making it useless to
eavesdroppers or hackers. If a part or all of the transmission is
captured en route, it will only appear as blocks of garbled characters.
When downloading or uploading files to a website, the File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) is often used. In this case the URL address will start
with ftp://, with the website address following. Often
people use special FTP clients (software) to more easily handle transfer
of large files, rather than using a Web browser. FTP clients are
especially useful for domain maintenance, and are more streamlined than a
Web browser.
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