[Vt71fcAqt7]

And now we can have whitespace in url queries but we are still using %20 everywhere because "that's standard"...

[CydeWeys]

Try copy-pasting a link that has actual whitespace in its URL queries and see if it gets linkified correctly. Just because you can doesn't mean you should! A space is like the one delimiter that is applicable for separating out URLs from the context of a larger blob of text.

[thaumasiotes]

Browsers will often display %20 as a space, but that's not the same thing as spaces being legal within URLs.

[Vt71fcAqt7]

You are right. Seems firefox displays %20 as whitespace and converts whitespace to %20 when you use it. Chrome displays it as %20 but still converts whitespace to %20 if you try to use it.

[nayuki]

Space is not legal at the HTTP request level, because the opening line uses space as a delimiter like:

    GET /your/path-to/the.file HTTP/1.1

[layer8]

Have fun with newline and spaces/tabs conversions when allowing whitespace in URLs.