I think we should discount <i>The Widget Formerly Known As The Address Bar</i> from these sorts of discussions. The omnibox[chrome]&#x2F;awesomebar[ff]&#x2F;frustrationmaker[edge]&#x2F;etc. is a field where a human can type or paste all sorts of guff, and where the browser can present the human with a representation of the location of the cat video currently playing on the screen (complete with optional scheme, padlock icon, elided path elements, fancy colours and shading, Unicode snowmen, etc.)<p>Sometimes the guff from the human looks exactly the same as a URL, sometimes it&#x27;s close enough to work out what they meant, and the rest of the time it&#x27;s just guff. If it looks exactly like a URL or IRI, it&#x27;s trivial for the browser to turn it into a proper URI and emit an appropriate request. If it&#x27;s close, then some assumptions can be made, but the browser is still responsible for constructing the actual URI. That doesn&#x27;t mean that what the human typed has any bearing on the underlying protocols or standards, or the definition of a URI&#x2F;URL.