Is "www" desirable in we site URL?

[Bob Duncan]

Folks:

> I'm not so sure you can always leave off "www" in the URL when
> you're using Netscape. (I'm on 3.0 for Windows 3.1).
> 
> My university's home page is www.albany.edu. When I just point
> the browser to "albany.edu," I get to a forwarding page set up
> last year, pointing to the new university home page. I need to
> type "www.albany.edu" to get to the current page.
>
>   -- Laura Cohen

Regardless of whether "www" in URLs is desirable or not, its 
presence does allow some typing shortcuts, but only (apparently) 
in specific situations as mentioned by Bob Long and Gary Newhouse 
in previous posts on this topic.  I don't think anyone ever 
implied "www" could always be left off.

If a URL has the form http://www.whatever.com, the address can be 
reached by typing in just the "whatever" part, e.g., all you need 
to get to yahoo, is "yahoo."  This only works with addresses 
containing the "www" *and* the "com", i.e., typing "whatever" will 
not work if the address is http://greatplace.whatever.com or 
http://www.whatever.edu.  

Leaving off "http://" works for any address with "www", but you 
still need the "www" itself and the rest of the address when you 
key it in.

This works in Netscape 2.x+ on a PC (at least it did 10 minutes 
ago when all of this was a new toy to me).  I can't vouch for any 
other browsers or platforms.

Bob Duncan


  Robert E. Duncan 
  School of Information Science and Policy 
  SUNY - The University at Albany		    
  rd3776 at cnsvax.albany.edu		    
  bduncan at crocker.com
  http://www.crocker.com/~bduncan 
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