| Vote for your favorite below. Or upvote if you prefer sharing urls without "http:", and downvote if you prefer keeping "http:" in the picture. ============== Can we agree to drop the use of "http://www.google.com", and let browsers and email clients auto-generate urls from "//google.com" instead? Which do you favor for use in print, email and advertising? Option A (http://) ------------------ http://google.com http://facebook.com http://mint.com http://news.ycombinator.com http://voice.google.com Option B (//) ------------- //google.com //facebook.com //mint.com //news.ycombinator.com //voice.google.com Option C () ----------- google.com facebook.com mint.com news.ycombinator.com voice.google.com Let's see where the community stands. What barriers exist to shortening the syntax for http and https resources to "//url.tld"? If Hacker News supports the shift, Web 2.0 might just might support the change. One proposed measure of spectacular success: If Google Mail staff reading this thread devote development time to prefilling the "//google.com" link destination to "http://google.com" when users highlight and link text that reads "//google.com", and promote this as a flexibility feature to its 350 million active users. (If Google promotes "//link.com" as a secure simplicity feature, we'll save ourselves googols of keystrokes, and enable enhanced textual clarity and reading speed for urls printed in-line in emails and on paper.) |
Typing in http:// is never necessary, so we're already saving as many keystrokes as possible.