The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth
Perhaps the author has a point, but I don't think it's as bad as he puts it. Grandma and Grandad don't need to learn UNIX paths to use the net, they just need to know one thing: the hostname. They type in "google.com" or "walmart.com" and that's it, not hard to grok. Perhaps they don't fully get what .com means but they know it's needed and some sites have different ones.<p>You never see an advert with "visit our site at <a href="http://user:pass@mycompany.com/app/page1244.html?abc=def#hello"" rel="nofollow">http://user:pass@mycompany.com/app/page1244.html?abc=def#hel...</a>, it's just "mycompany.com". The structure of the URL's once the user has hit the landing page and clicked a couple of links doesn't need to be known by the user, nor should the user care.<p>To put it simply: if it was hard then the web wouldn't be as big as it is now. Non-technical people understand simple URI's and that's all that's needed.