World Wide Web Addresses (URLs)

A common method of reaching a web page is to type in the web address or URL into the Location Bar of a browser. World Wide Web addresses are arranged in a similar fashion to all other types of Internet address (eg. e-mail). They are also called URLs, or Universal Resource Locators - a standard shorthand way of referring to the location of hypertext documents.

Web addresses normally have the letters 'http' before them, standing for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This tells the browser to look for a web page. For example, the URL http://www.microsoft.com will take you to the opening page of the Microsoft web site. Please note though, that modern browsers don't require you to type in http:// before the rest of the URL - if you type www.microsoft.com into the Location Bar, your browser will happily assume you want a web page and will automatically insert the 'http://'.

You may be familiar with the suffix .com in a URL, but there are others and they give an indication to the purpose of the site:

Contents: World Wide Web

Skill Check: World Wide Web