We don’t type “http://” in our browsers anymore, so why use “www”? Let’s make the traditional URL syntax sandwich more noticeable, by turning it open-faced.

Source: tasteofhome.com

Once upon a time, if you can believe it, web surfers who wanted to visit a site needed to enter in the entire URL into their browser before hitting Go. Not just the “www” prefix, but the entire line of a standard URL: http://www.sandwich.com/. Back in the nineties, browsers didn’t have autocomplete functionality, they didn’t have search engines built into the Address Bar, they only had barebones Bookmarking and History functions; they were primitive, to say the least.

Most importantly, the functionality known as “commercialization”, “.com”-ification, or “cannonicalization”, which allows browsers to essentially guess the remaining portions of a given URL based on trial-and-error, was in still its infancy. It was also extremely bandwidth-intensive on dialup modems of the day, making incomplete address entry unpalatable to users.

As a result, when advertising their shiny new websites, companies needed to teach potential visitors an entire string of characters into order to get them to log on without losing patience with excessive page load times. Needless to say, this had a frictional effect on the adoption of the web, as typical folks simply didn’t know what any of that gobbledy-gook stood for, nor could they remember such a complicated syntax just to visit a framed page full of repeating backgrounds and animated ‘Under Construction‘ gifs. There’s a real argument to be made that the lack of simplification in syntax for the only method for accessing pre-Google websites was a significant hurdle for promoting websites via traditional media.

Of course, nowadays things are fundamentally different. Domain guessing, the modern evolution of cannonicalization features, is included as part of every major browser, and is no longer hamstrung by bandwidth limitations. Today’s browsers also offer modern conveniences to simplify web navigation, as well as a continuing convergence of real-world media with the web via tech like augmented reality and QR codes, there is also a public knowledge of the way web addresses work.

Kids in school are taught the meaning behind the so-called “URL sandwich” at an early age, so making mental notes of website addresses found in the real world is a simple task. Most of us simply ignore the prefixes and suffixes and hone in on the meat in the middle. As a result, it’s rare to see the “http://” quantifier on a printed website advert at all; why bother, when the vast majority of public-facing sites use the same syntax, and even if they don’t, the browser can make the necessary leap in logic on its own?

Which leads us to today. We’re fast approaching a tipping point for the web, as the number of sites tied to the current standard TLDs (top-level domains) are approaching the limit of hostnames (the meat in the middle) that can be assigned within each domain. At some point, we’ll simply run out of character combinations that can be used with the familiar suffixes .com, .org, .gov, etc.

In response, the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), charged with regulating and monitoring various aspects of the World Wide Web, has begun introducing new TLDs into the public sphere in an attempt to expand the range of commonly-used TLDs. You may have seen advertisements for websites ending in .co, .mobi, or if you’re feeling frisky, .xxx. The usage of these and other TLDs will only continue to grow.

Unfortunately, introducing these new bottom buns to the URL sandwich involves changing the public’s subconscious reaction to seeing a URL in the real world. Think about the last time you’ve seen a web address on a billboard or in a magazine: How did you know you were looking at a URL? Was it the “www” at the beginning, the “.com” at the end- or a combination of the two? Furthermore, are you sure it was even a .com address you were looking at, or did the quick glance at the “www” and the “.” allow your mind to glaze over everything else but the “meat” between them?

The truth is, the reason the .com TLD has always been so popular is because we’ve taught ourselves to gloss over the complicated parts of a URL when we read it, rather than take in the entire syntax. We recognize a printed URL by the top bun and the bottom buns, but we rarely take notice of whether those buns are sourdough or sesame seed, for lack of a better metaphor (can you tell yet that I’m dieting?).

So in order to break this habit and force users to take notice of these new TLDs, I propose we eliminate the top bun altogether. By reading a URL in a different syntax than what we’re used to seeing, we’ll pay more conscious attention to the entire address, dot-whatever and all. Especially since the “www” prefix has been rendered unnecessary by modern browsers anyway. We’re already seeing a shift towards this trend in real-world URLs, especially with the rise of shortened URLs used by services like Twitter and Imgur.

Making a willful decision to strip the prefix from a web address will speed up the adoption of new suffixes easier, by making them more noticeable as part of this unfamiliar new syntax. After all, who doesn’t find an open-faced sandwich more interesting and delicious than a boring closed-face?

Excuse me, I have a diet to break.