Question: What is a URL?

Answer: A URL is the address for a specific site. You should get into the habit of looking at the URL of every HyperLink before you click on it (hover over the link, and look in the feedback area in the lower left corner of the window). LOOK before you CLICK.

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) contains unique information about the server

and

the path on the server to find and retrieve the information that you are requesting.

The address (or URL) for this page contains the following information:
look up at the top of your monitor - under the icons - see Location: on the left side? (or net-site or something similar, they are always changing something)

http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/start/url.html
http://protocol - http is a HTML or web document
www.usd.edu/server name - computer.domain.name
trio/tut/start/pathname to the directory you are requesting
url.htmlfilename you are requesting

It is important to read the URL's of the pages that you are visiting. When you look at the URL you can often speculate on the validity of the source.

Lets say that you were looking for the latest service pack for NT and you can't find it. You quick searched the web for it and these two URL's came up after you entered your search criteria. Again, if you were looking for an upgrade to fix a bug in NT - which would you download. Of the following two (made up) links - which would you tend to trust as the actual site for the patch.

http://www.microsoft.com/NT/updates/servicepack1.exe
http://www.hacker_patch.com/virus/office/goodone/destroy/servicepack1.exe

You should also know that a tilde ( ~ ) in a URL refers to a users account. A users account usually is less strict regarding the content.

Other protocols include the following:

protocoldefines which internet protocol is used to get to the server
http://Hypertext Transfer Protocol - server is supporting the web protocol
https://Secure WEB page - server is supporting the web protocol - but is secure
ftp://File Transfer Protocol - server is set up to send and receive files
news:News Server - used to access a usenet newsgroup
mailto:Mail Server - access to e-mail server
telnet://Telnet - access to a terminal emulation session
Question: I asked someone for a web address (URL) and they kept saying slash and dot all the time

    Answer: Slash just means the / character right beside the shift on the right side of the keyboard.
    Not to be confused with the backslash (\)
    Dot just means . (period)
Question: How can I find information on a certain company?

    Answer: Most companies have purchased rights for a site that contains their name.

    For instance:

    Sometimes companies were a little late registering their name and get stuck with some derivative of their name. ATI makes great video cards but ATI was already taken by Announcement Technologies, Inc. so ATI's web address is really http://www.atitech.com. (I think ATI recently purchased the ATI domain name.)

Question: What does the .com mean?

    Answer: Just a way to differentiate between different types of sites.
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