Nasa

[Peter Murray]

--On Thu, Jul 3, 1997 5:52 AM -0700 "Geoffrey McKim" <mckimg at indiana.edu>
wrote: 
> While I don't want to insert myself into this debate at all, this issue
is
> compounded by the fact that Netscape and Internet Explorer, in an attempt
> to be "helpful", will fill in the ".com" automatically if no top-level
> domain is specified.  That means that if I type "nasa" or "whitehouse" in
> the Location box, I will get "nasa.com" or "whitehouse.com".  It may not
be
> a matter of people mistaking .com for .gov -- rather, one merely needs to
> type in "nasa" and they will get the bogus site.

And while we are pursing this portion of the thread, this "helpful"
behavior could be the worst thing that Netscape has done for the Internet
and Web community.  (At the very least, it ranks right up there with
<FRAMESET> and
<BLINK>.)  This not only promotes laziness and disinformation (such as the
NASA.GOV vs. NASA.COM) but will utterly break when the new Top Level
Domains are put into practice.  If you have any influence at all with
browser manufactures or patrons, please join me in telling them that this
is a bad feature and educate patrons to use the "full" URL.

(I hesitate to think what will happen when "http" is replaced by the Next
Best Thing and we've taught all of these people just to type
"www.<company>.com" rather than "http://www.<company>.com/".)


Peter
--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                      pem at po.cwru.edu
Digital Media Services                   http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio            W:216-368-5888