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Previous: Toilet door on train | Main | Next: (Not broken) Office
November 12, 2005 12:03 AM
Broken: 'www' abbreviation
Karma Kanic forwards a comment he spotted on craigslist:
The abbreviation 'www' is used as shorthand for 'world wide web'. 'www' has nine syllables. 'world wide web' has three.
It's proper pronounciation, "Dubadubadub" has only five syllables. Still longer than "World Wide Web", but more fun to say.
I believe the quote is credited to the late Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame) from his posthumous "Salmon of Doubt" book:
"And now we have the World Wide Web, the only thing I can think of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for."
Am I the only one that hates when people say "Dubya Dubya insertwebsitehere dot com." They miss the "w dot"
The abbrieviation takes 3/14 the time to type, so it's not that broken, but interesting to thinkg about anyway
Although 3/14 may be correct, it would have been quicker to just round it up to 1/5 of the time. That would have saved you 1/4 of the time.
Yep. That's what we say at my company - dubdubdub. I usually shorten it even further to zero - don't say it at all! URL's almost always work without the www. Ex. Go to thisisbroken.com
The phrase 'www' is not broken, as it is intended to save time when typing, not speaking.
In general, the 'www' subdomain is broken, as it serves no useful purpose, and is usually unnecessary. When it is required by a website, it is redundant, as it simply restates the use of HTTP on Port 80, which is assumed by browsers in the first place.
Basically, the need to indicate the use of actual letters is not broken, but the use of those letters should never be necessary in the first place.
[Read more at: http://no-www.org/]
Poissonally, I say "wuh-wuh-wuh" instead of "dub-dub-dub", based on the "A Fish Called Wanda" line: "oh, it's got a 'wuh' for "Wendy"!"
I swear I've typed in websites directly and I'd get a 404, but when I would put the www. into it, then the site would come up. I wish I could think of an example of this right now, but I cant :(
Well, some websites require a www, some require no www, and some don't care. All the more reason to remove it.
This broken thing is being addressed. Check out http://no-www.org/. I just updated my site to silently redirect users to http://domain.com instead of them having to use www all the time.
Everybody else should do it too! No more w's!
>>In general, the 'www' subdomain is broken, as it serves no useful purpose, and is usually unnecessary. When it is required by a website, it is redundant, as it simply restates the use of HTTP on Port 80, which is assumed by browsers in the first place.
It was useful back when "the Internet" didn't mean "the web." Your business might have several different services, all attached to the same domain name. So you'd name your servers "ftp.apple.com" for your FTP server, "nntp.apple.com" for your Usenet server, etc, "smtp.apple.com" for outgoing email, etc. You used to frequently see domains that didn't even have webservers attached to them, they were used merely for email or FTP or some other service. Of course, even in those days, a smart admin would redirect any port 80 requests to the correct subdomain anyway.
What's really broken is sites that *require* www and don't work if you don't type it. What's super broken is sites that don't return an error page when you try without www, but instead send you to the Apache "welcome to Apache" or "welcome to IIS" page.
Of course, "www" is still stupid because the protocol is named "http," and so it should be "http.apple.com," but that's neither here nor there.
While the topic of the WWW being unnecessary as a domain is another topic. The issue brought up was the 'www.' used in an online posting. Hence, since this was WRITTEN and NOT SPOKEN, this is not broken. 'WWW' as written is a shortcut. How one SAYS this verbally is a different issue. Personally, if verbally communicating a website to someone, I dont even mention the WWW. Writing it or typing the complete www.domain.com will usually trigger a 'hotlink' to further help the audience.
Just an interesting side note - in Italian, the word for V is "vu", W is doppia-vu (double-V, which makes more sense than double-U, by the way...). Anyway, they way they pronounce www is "vu-vu-vu", ("VVV"), much shorter than the more correct "doppia-vu doppia-vu doppia-vu".
Rudy
umm... to oversimplfy a tad...
www."foo".com and "foo".com are actually two different addresses at the same domain.
www.one.com is "generally" configured to shoot to one.com but doesn't actually have to be. (Usually a lazy host won't "activate" it)
You can configure them to be two different addresses. (if not this; that) So if it's not set to forward, you either get a different page (if one exists) or you get a 404 error (if none exists).
Think of the old days when you could get a name like "myplace.foo.com".
Ain't broken, just rarely used.
In Sweden we do as the Italians. We pronounce "W" as "V" instead when it comes to URLs to make things easier.
www is really redundant and has no use anymore.
Ctrl-Enter is an Internet Explorer hotkey and does not function similarly in [some] other browsers.
And "World Wide Web," technically, is three and a half syllables. "ld" represents an occluded syllable, a "@ld" sort of half-syllable.
Yeah, I'm nuts.
St. is an abreviation. It is pronounced "street".
Dr. is an abreviation. It is pronounced "doctor".
Mrs. is an abreviation. It is pronounced "missus".
WWW is an abreviation. It is pronounced "world wide web".
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Previous: Toilet door on train | Main | Next: (Not broken) Office
keyword 'shorthand'. as in, www is a lot faster to write/type. not really broken, but interesting to consider.
Posted by: gmangw at November 12, 2005 12:22 AM