Subject: Meaningful Site URLs

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:49:05 +0300 (EEST)

How important do you think it is for a site to have meaningful URLs? By
that I mean that a human being can learn about the document by looking at
the URL. An example for a site that has such URLs is Yahoo Groups:

Each one of the mailing list starts with
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/[mailing list ID] and from there on, there
is messages/, files/ links/ etc. Very nice.

Amazon.com however displays a horrid line containing obidos and other
beasts in its URLs. My father claims they have the state information
contained there, but I find it more reasonable that it is in a cookie.

There are various other examples on the net. In my opinion it is important
that a site have meaningufl URLs because it adds to its web-feel. What do
you think?

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes
what went wrong more quickly.

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From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 09:24:21 +0300

> that a site have meaningufl URLs because it adds to its web-feel. What do

You can have a perfectly working and good site with impossible URLs
and most users will never notice, especially if they're not technical
anals like us and don't try to cut and paste the URLs. 

But IMH and unqualified O, good URLs are still clearer, and I guess 
are also easier to write and debug software for (a la "always use 
text for protocols and formats"). Simply better engineering, I guess.

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 10:52:00 +0300

> the URL. An example for a site that has such URLs is Yahoo Groups:

I'm assuming your talking about the whole url of a subpage, not just the
"niceness" of the home page's URL (like nadav.harel.org.il vs.
www.math.technion.ac.il/~nyh).

I usually like lucid URLs for the same reason that I like open-source software:
If I want (and I usually don't) I can look at the URL and try to figure out
what it means, try to remove the last component in the path to move to a
higher level in the site, and so on. When I understand what the URL says, I
can also understand what it doesn't say: i.e., does it contain any components
specific to me or to my session? If I bookmark it (or worse, put a link to
it in some site) will I bookmark the appropriate page, or am I simply
bookmarking some transient session information which will be unavailable the
next time I log in, or some personal information about myself?

> contained there, but I find it more reasonable that it is in a cookie.

Obidos is Amazon's version of a "cgi-bin".

As far as obscurity goes, Amazon's URL scheme is relatively well-defined and
clear (to the well-initiated). For example, consider the ugly URL

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002XE9/ref=pd_gw_qpt_3/104-4703713-2957083

As I said, exec/obidos is simply their "cgi-bin". ASIN/B000002XE9 is the
product's id (ISBN in case of books, something else for other products).
ref=pd_gw_qpt_3 specifies what refered me to this CD, and 104-4703713-2957083
is some sort of session ID which you can safely remove (your identification is
kept in a cookie, but seperate sessions aren't, and don't have much meaning in
Amazon anyway because a shopping cart is specific to a user, not a session),
which I've modified in this example because I have no idea what kind of secret
information about me it contains ;)

Now, you can remove all the referal and session crap and still arrive a
valid URL for the same CD:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002XE9/

Quite clear, isn't it?

Further, now you can add my referal id, so that if you buy this CD I will
get a small percentage for refering you:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002XE9/thealmostcomplet

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Sunday, Sep  9 2001, 21 Elul 5761
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |The 3 stages of sex: Tri-weekly, try
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |weekly, try weakly.

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From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 09 Sep 2001 14:20:09 +0300

> > the URL. An example for a site that has such URLs is Yahoo Groups:

<snipped a part of Nadav's reply>

> I can look at the URL and try to figure out what it means, try to
> remove the last component in the path to move to a higher level in
> the site, and so on.

Hear, hear! Also, I find it useful if the URL of a search query is
understandable. Sometimes I like to create  search queries on the
fly outside of a browser (in emacs in my case, e.g. search for a word
at point, or the words in a marked region, etc).

Call me a geek, but I say meaningful URLs are important.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked] 
"If it ain't broken, it has not got enough features yet."

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 22:52:04 +0300

> > contained there, but I find it more reasonable that it is in a cookie.

I would like to play a little more games with Amazon's URLs :)

Did anyone notice the new "tab" image on the top of Amazon's page saying
something like "NADAV'S STORE" (with NADAV, of course, replaced by your
first name). How did they do it? Obviously, they don't have a gif for
every person - they have a CGI that generates it on-the-fly.

They should have used some obscure, encrypted, numeric string and their
CGI should have translated it back to text and rendered it into a gif.
Instead, they used a (relatively-) clear URL, looking like:

http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/nav/personalized/tabs/yourstore-off-sliced._ZCNADAV%27S,0,2,0,0,verdenab,7,90,90,80_.gif

Oops, now they're going to regret having used clear URLs ;) Let's play a
little fun with them. Let's start by having an image touting "Amazon's
crap STORE" coming right off Amazon's servers:

http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/nav/personalized/tabs/yourstore-on-sliced._ZCAmazon%27s%20crap,0,2,0,0,verdenab,7,255,204,102_.gif

Poking around a little more, we can change colors, fonts, spacing, etc. For
example
http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/nav/personalized/tabs/yourstore-on-sliced._ZCAmazon%27s%20crap,0,0,0,0,times,9,255,255,255_.gif

and to have a different color background:
http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/nav/personalized/tabs/yourstore-off-sliced._ZCAmazon%27s%20crap,0,0,0,0,times,9,0,0,255_.gif

Isn't it fun? ;)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Sunday, Sep  9 2001, 22 Elul 5761
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If Windows is the answer, you didn't
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |understand the question.