Did you know that full URLs can be expressed in a relative syntax, without including the protocol? Call me ignorant, but I had never heard of this until today. I found this when researching HTTPS: http://b-s.me/ba

//b-s.me/ba

is the same as:

http://b-s.me/ba

except that the former example uses the protocol that is currently on the page. This works in every browser, and is a little used, original part of HTML. Why have I never heard of this before?

Can't say I've ever seen that before either. I knew about root relative URLs with the single / out front, but never saw using two to stand for the current protocol.

Guess I learned something new today too.

It didn't work for me, but then again, that's just me I guess...Btw, tried: //google.com resorted to file:////google.com which doesn't exist.

Are you sure you learned something new, or maybe just a bit too much time in front of the computer.

Brian this is when adding a link to a web page, not typing into the address bar of your browser. Different scenario.

Looks like I learned something new today too.

perhaps it is used similar to the .. when used in ../images/garbage.jpg
or ./images/garbage.jpg

To me though it would only work on servers where the server recognizes it as a valid relevency....

Personally I always teach students to use full URL's.
http://www.website.com/ or https://www.website.com

I would wonder if the // creates a link that the browser recognizes.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Brian this is when adding a link to a web page, not typing into the address bar of your browser. Different scenario.

Actually, typing it into the address bar works just fine for me on FF 3.5, but if used on a link inside a local file, it will be relative to the file system.

Originally Posted by marketingman100

To me though it would only work on servers where the server recognizes it as a valid relevency....

Personally I always teach students to use full URL's.
http://www.website.com/ or https://www.website.com

I would wonder if the // creates a link that the browser recognizes.

From what I understand, this doesn't have anything to do with the server, only the browser, or rather, any client which uses HTTP protocols to access resources. According to the article, this is how the writer links to external resources when using https, to avoid generating warnings about mixing secure and insecure content. This works because it is technically a relative link, and all relative links on an HTTPS page use the HTTPS protocol. Of course this will only work if the external resource has a valid certificate, but I think most CDN systems have one.

This behavior is described in RFC 1808, way back when HTML 2 was specified: http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1808.txt

Originally Posted by vangogh

Brian this is when adding a link to a web page, not typing into the address bar of your browser. Difference scenario.

ah, ok...Cool it does work

Wow... that's cool stuff! I didn't know. Thx!

Originally Posted by wayfarer07

yping it into the address bar works just fine for me on FF 3.5

Didn't work for me on FF 3.5. Looked for something relative to my filesystem. What OS are you on? I wonder if that has something to do with it.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Didn't work for me on FF 3.5. Looked for something relative to my filesystem. What OS are you on? I wonder if that has something to do with it.

I have Windows Vista on this computer.

Oddly, it appears my browser is simply set to remove slashes at the beginning of anything typed into the address bar.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////google.com

and also

/google.com

when typed into the address bar both resulted in being directed to google. This of course won't happen when using an actual link in the HTML document.

Wow, new for me. I think it is done to avoid link formulation.

yes! i really thank for u. really i feel that some one i got new. thanks again..