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January 23, 2007 12:03 AM
Broken: Sign with website url
David Barnes submits a picture taken in the UK:
I spotted this sign on a primary school display board with the website address UNCONDITIONALCOMPASSION.COM in all upper case, which is not broken in itself.
What is broken however, is that on the same sign, there is text underneath the url in all upper case that states "all in lower case."
Whoever printed the sign should have checked to see if web site addresses were case sensitive, (and they would have found out they weren't) before they printed the sign. It is broken to make people think that website addresses are case sensitive.
Actually, URLs *are* case sensitive - but neither the protocol part nor the domain name parts of the URL are. In this case, yes, the full address that's been printed is fine in any case - but if you had a path on the end of that, it wouldn't be.
As an example, this address is http://www.thisisbroken.com/b/2007/01/sign_with_websi.html . If you try http://www.thisisbroken.com/B/2007/01/sign_with_websi.html instead, it won't work. :)
Maybe this label was printed with a small hand-held label printer that can only print upper-case letters (or its user didn't know how to switch to lower-case)?
(Still, the 2nd line shouldn't be there, of course.)
To clarify Ciaran's comment slightly:
*Neither the protocol part ("http://") nor the domain name part ("www.whatever.com") is ever case sensivite in a URL.
*The part to the right of the first slash MAY be case sensitive depending on what kind of server is being used. Windows is not case sensitive, so if the server runs Windows, in most cases the URL won't be case sensitive. Linux/Solaris/etc. ARE case sensitive, however, so if the server is running one of those OSes, case matters.
Regardless, the advice given in the photo was idiotic.
Just a possible funny scenario: perhaps one person gave another person instructions such as:
The sign should be [url] (in all lower case).
and the person printing was too literal?
I think steph is absolutely right. That's the kind of thing that works cited instructions say, i've just never seen it interpreted like that!
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Opel Astra TwinTop convertible top | Main | Next: Self-serve ice bag freezer warning
regardless of the case sensitivity of the web page the person who typed this is broken... they had to press the CAPS LOCK KEY TO MAKE IT TYPE IN UPPER CASE, they could have just NOT done that and skipped the extra instructions...
Posted by: VHoratio at January 23, 2007 01:51 AM