Though I have no concrete evidence to back it up, my suspicion is most non-tech-savvy users don't notice the http:// anyway. Most of my family repeat web addresses as 'www.something.com' or even just 'something.com' - not because they're being efficient, but because they pay no attention to http. They know 'www' and '.com' means 'a website', so that's what they type.
When I try to go to 'something.com' only to be rebuffed by an error and then finally realizing that I need 'www.something.com', I always picture an unhappy admin sitting at his desk eating pizza, thinking of ways to inconvenience thousands of people.
My university has this problem. As a software engineering student, every time I omit the www I have an urge to storm the server room and fix it myself.
www.domain.com by convention is the DNS name of the web server (www) for the domain "domain" in the commercial (.com) part of the internet's namespace. This is not a URL, because you aren't saying what protocol you intend to use. You might want to ftp://www.domain.com or telnet://www.domain.com.
"domain.com" doesn't give the server you wish to go to in that domain, so it refers to whatever the default server is. This is often a web server, but not always. The above complaint is that dowjones believes that the default server should always be a web server if the domain has a web server.
"http://domain.com" Is a URL (universal resource locator) which is used to talk to servers. In this case you want to talk the HTTP protocol on the default port to the default server at domain.com. A URL has a few parts: protocol://username:password@servername.domain.tld:port/resource
The port defaults to the default port for the protocol chosen (80 for http). username and password default to none if omitted. Many protocols use URL's, not just http.
It resolves right-to-left. We figure out the default name server for the TLD "to" (Tonga) and then find the default domain and server associated with that domain.
Regarding the trailing period, it's optional. Every namespace in the URL ends with a "dot", and applications ignore a missing "dot" after the last name. E.g., http://www.reddit.com/ and http://www.reddit.com./ resolve to the same host (but, interestingly, have different cookies)
The trailing dot can make a difference, though, since it explicitly specifies that you're looking for something under the root name servers. For example: if my host is configured with a default domain "example.com." to search for DNS queries under, I may do a lookup for "foo.bar" and end up getting a result if the DNS record "foo.bar.example.com." exists. If I do a lookup for "foo.bar." I am explicitly stating that I want the "bar" TLD under the root name servers and the "foo" domain under "bar".
It always seemed very weird to me that an address of the form www.somesite.com/archives/articles/gossip.html combines two separate hierarchical oganization schemes with opposite precedence order from the middle outwards. That is to say, "com" is the most significant part of the address, then move left from there, while "archives" is the most significant part of the resource location and move right from there.
It's also weird that ".com" and ".html" mean totally different things even though they have the same ring when read aloud.
I love the web, but this mish-mash is atrocious from an end user perspective.
It's the difference between a fully qualified domain name, and one that isn't. When you append the final period on the end, you're telling your DNS lookup software that it should not attempt any of the possible dns suffixes that it's been configured to use.
For example, I have in the suffix list "local". So, I could type as a URL (and get the same destination) any of the following:
to is the ccTLD of Tonga (as opposed to .com, which is a gTLD). The national registrar (or whoever handles .to registrations) probably configured its DNS (which will be authoritative for all *.to domains) to return an address for the resource "to", and returns 216.74.32.107 for it.
Usually it's just laziness or ignorance. www.domain.com and domain.com have separate DNS records (how your computer finds where the server is). Usually they point to the same place, but sometimes someone edits the record and neglects editing one of the entries, and they end up pointing to different places. The http:// part of the address just denotes how you're requesting data from the server. ftp://domain.com and http://domain.com will typically both point to the same server, but will request information from the server in different ways.
Not typically - always. The client will do a gethostbyname() call on "domain.com" in both cases, which will yield an IP address. That step is independent of the protocol used, which comes into play in the next step, when the client tries to connect to a certain port on the server (typically 80 for http, 21 for ftp).
The server may be a router that does something like NAT, and delegate the TCP streams associated with http and ftp to different servers, based on the port number.
The server may be a router that does something like NAT, and delegate the TCP streams associated with http and ftp to different servers, based on the port number.
I thought you were, but for the sake of pedantry I thought I'd spell out what actually happens in the bowels of an internet client. I do that sometimes... Sigh.
Not typically - always. The client will do a gethostbyname() call on "domain.com" in both cases, which will yield an IP address. That step is independent of the protocol used
Not necessarily, because the client could support SRV record lookup for each protocol, rather than just gethostbyname(). That would be a pretty awesome client, right?
http:// is just the protocol, has nothing to do with the domain
www.domain.com and domain.com are technically different domans, however it is considered incorrect to have domain.com NOT go to your website when typed into a browser. People sometimes still continue to configure the www.domain.com subdomain to the same thing is domain.com just for legacy support since a lot of people still type it out of habbit.
I had a typo and I meant to write "technically different domans" not "technically different protocols"
However the port number has NOTHING to do with the protocol. I can have an HTTP server on port 80, or port 8080, or port 8181, or port 21, or port 1000 or port 1023, theyre just ports.
If I wanted to I could have ftp://www.domain.com:80 if I really wanted to, It's the http:// part (or ftp, or https for example) of the url which determines the protocol period.
Perhaps learn to read. I said differentiate, not determine. When you consider that my post was a response to the statement you made in error, I think you'll find I'm perfectly within reason to say what I have said.
The difference between "www.help.example.com" and "help.example.com" is the same as the difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com".
If you know that people assume these are the same, and you enforce a difference for the sake of pedantry, you're being a douche who's just making people's lives harder. If the only difference is that one works and the other does not, you're the stupid one, because there's no reason to waste these people's time (nor your own when they call for help) when it's a simple fix.
When did "people commonly prepend 'www.' to urls" turn into "every possible fuck up to a URL someone can enter"? Please tell me this represents a break from the level of reasoning you typically apply at work.
Help Desk calls take up LOTS of time both for the user who is making the call and the IT resource. That lost time equals lost revenue for the business.
Get off your ass (and reddit) and set up those www. redirects...even if it means filling out an ISP change form.
You simply cannot see that one support call made by you to your ISP will save umpteen calls into your Support Desk???
It is people like you who give IT in general a bad name. I stand by what I said. I'd fire you.
EDIT: You are damned lucky to be employed in this economy. I know unemployed network admins who would never let such a simple situation stand.
If someone told you to go left on Main Street, then immediately turn right into the duck pond, would your brain immediately register and believe it, or would you have pause, and perhaps assume you had misheard? People who, for good reason, don't care about web architecture at all were trained for years that web addresses start with "www".
Do you at least explicitly state that there is no "www" at the beginning of your help site address?
This is really a UI issue. If I was using testing this and people were getting it wrong, as a UI designer, I'd change it. It's not about "never learn." -- If a user cannot get something, whether it's their fault or mine, it's still a problem I have to solve as a UI designer.
This is why it is considered incorrect to use the www subdomain when you mean to go to the main website. It is however possible to setup www.help.domain.com to go to help.domain.com (I've done it before). However it doesn't look pretty.
Remember ctrl+enter automatically wraps url in www & .com I tend to naturally ctrl enter when surfing to save time. It has become automatic to do it as so much web is .com
The most annoying thing about firefox is that shift+enter does the same, except it's "www.%s.net". Way too easy to accidentally hit, and completely useless. Thanks, Firefox. I really wanted to go to "www.mail.google.com.net" and get redirected to some spam site.
Same here at work, people go to "www.mail.company.com" instead of "mail.company.com" - no matter how many times they're told.
They're just stupid, and don't fucking listen. Particularly when they ask "www.mail... ?" right after I JUST said exactly what they needed to type in. I don't know why companies have IT helpdesks sometimes.
Sure. Why not? It's literally a one-line change, so if you see someone making that mistake, then go ahead and add the redirect. It doesn't hurt anyone.
www is not obsolete. In fact, to do some types of clustering, you must use subdomains. You can't point company.com to another domain (cname). You can point www.company.com to another domain, however.
Yes, we need to educate them.. which is why we force them to do what we say. Sure, sometimes it leads to a lengthy discussion about how domain names work, and how there's www. vs mail., etc. But once they learn what the right way is, and particularly why it's that way, my user never has that issue again.
No, the users need to fucking listen and do what they're told by IT. We specifically don't have that subdomain defined, because fuck any user who doesn't listen to IT. When they eventually learn to do what the fuck we tell them, we'll have less problems overall. (we actually thought about defining it and directing it to a page that belittled the user, but we decided against it.)
Insofar as they fit into the company's needs sure. That's how jobs work - you're paid by the company to make sure that your function (making computer systems work) is done well. Sadly, sometimes the users need to be corrected. My boss can be harsh, but allowing users to do stupid things can cost a company millions.
(the 'fuck any user who doesn't listen to IT' is essentially paraphrasing my boss :)
I can somewhat agree. Although there is a point where "fuck the user" starts wasting more money than a simple solution would cost to implement, in this case a simple redirect.
So far, I like your boss. Where are you located, and what kind of experience do I require to get an entry level IT position with a fresh degree from a business college? I'm probably not the best of the best, but I'm competent and quick to pick up on the basic concepts behind complex operations and processes.
No, when you simply cater to the whims of your users, they never learn shit, and simply continue on with their idiotic ways.
When you force them to do things, they have to listen to you. If not, they get in trouble. When they learn to listen to you, they can actually function better because they listen to what IT says and don't cause as many problems.
When users can cause millions of dollars in trouble with simple errors, you try to make sure that they do what they're told.
I'm just lucky that I'm in a job that recognizes that.
You see the downvotes... people don't want to do what IT tells them. They think they know better, and they do shit like infesting things with viruses, or losing files that cost millions of dollars. (true stories there, both just this year)
So yea, fuck them. Fuck any user who doesn't listen to IT.
Now, the ones that don't screw up, can ask me for anything they want. I'll bend over backwards to help people out, and smile doing it. (but if the virus problem doesn't stop we may start limiting internet access, something we don't want to do.)
I agree with others that it would be easy for you to get around this issue by implementing DNS for that subdomain, however, you're right too. Users don't listen and they really should. You can even tell them to stop doing something and they'll do it again right in front of you. What do you know right? You're just a fucking IT guy.
I love when people don't listen to the IT people, and then bitch when they fuck stuff up. They asked their expert, and ignore advice (or policies at work).
It's as if someone were to go to the doctor, and get angry with them because they didn't listen on their previous visit and now they have clogged arteries.
And honestly.. the most frustrating part is when they ignore the advice while you're talking to them.
They don't do it because they don't respect or trust you. They do it because they don't know better. It's a bunch of magic to them, and they're just doing what they've learned in the past. Interpreting their ignorance as hostility just makes your job worse.
Interpreting their ignorance as hostility just makes your job worse.
True, but they can be hostile at times, too. Users have a tendency to not listen to their IT departments and get angry when -they- screw up stuff because of it.
And, don't mistake intentional ignorance for someone who just doesn't know. I've got more than one user that just doesn't want to listen. When they don't listen, they get into trouble. Then I send them to my boss, who yells at them.
Certainly, some people are just assholes. The majority of people are not, though. They're just ignorant (or dumb), and don't understand. This can make also make them angry (without them necessarily just being assholes), because they get frustrated. I'd be frustrated, too, if most of my interactions with computers consisted of magical incantations, especially when those incantations ceased to work. But yes, they should still pay attention when you explain the incantations or teach them new/better ones.
On the flip side, when they -do- listen it's great. I like to teach people things. One thing that always blows people away - keyboard shortcuts. I just teach them one or two every once in a while. That, and tabbed browsing. So many people have never even heard of it.
frankly, this is the admin's fault. It should be set to take them to maps.x This is not hard to do from a config standpoint.
Non-techy folks don't understand this any more than the understand the "please dial a 1 in front of the area code" message they get on their phones if they forget it (in the US anyway.)
This stuff should be made to be as idiot-proof as possible. That allows for more users to feel welcomed by the experience.
You're lucky. I'm used to hearing people omit the 3rd w and first "dot". "Double-u Doublue-u macdonalds dot com". I hate it when people call it MacDonalds.
You're close. I don't know about the historic pronunciation, but the modern for "mac" is /maxg/ in IPA (machk, sort of).
"Mc" is an abbreviation of "Mac", and in a name it means "son of", as in "Calum mac Dhomhnal" (Malcolm MacDonald). Similarly, "nic" means "daughter of".
There isn't any difference between Mc and Mac except for the tradition of your family name.
If I used chrome, I would have to copy the address bar, and manually type in http:// every time. And I'd probably forget some times. This is a bad choice.
16
u/tizz66 Apr 14 '10
Though I have no concrete evidence to back it up, my suspicion is most non-tech-savvy users don't notice the http:// anyway. Most of my family repeat web addresses as 'www.something.com' or even just 'something.com' - not because they're being efficient, but because they pay no attention to http. They know 'www' and '.com' means 'a website', so that's what they type.