the (un)real thoughts of realbt

My last post about URLs was likely a little long and confusing. Allow me to summarise in 3 points exactly what I think is wrong with most URLs today:

1. URLs to web documents (essentially html files, or anything that renders as html) should not include a file extension specifier. The user doesn’t need this, nor does a smart web server/application.
2. URLs should not contain query strings unless absolutely necessary. Most simple GET queries can be nested as a nicely formed path in a URL.
3. A URL should tell you exactly what you are accessing. Numerical identifiers (usually database keys) are fine (of course, it’s better to have meaningful numerical identifiers than random ones, but that’s another story) as long as the user is able to identify them as such. For example: http://www.news.ca/article/7467289598. Even though the number is meaningless, one should be able to make an educated guess that it is some sort of unique identifier used to “look up” the actual article.