Navigation with Browsers

URL Summary

URL Addresses | URL Details | Relative Addresses | URL Summary | Methods of Navigation | Going Further

So do you need to know all these details about URL's to access files with your browser? Not at all! You don't usually need to know why the URL address is what it is any more than you need to know why your normal mail address is what it is in order to use it. You just need to give the browser the correct address, and let it take care of the details, just like you put the correct address on a letter and then let the Postal Service worry about the details of delivering it.

That is why Web Browsers are just about the greatest invention ever: You don't need to know very much to be able to use them quite effectively! They hide an enormous amount of technical sophistication behind a simple and intuitive graphical interface.

To review, a URL address specifies uniquely a file on the Internet and has two basic parts, the server method, and a specification telling exactly where the file is on the Internet:

A more complete discussion of URL addresses may be found at

but what you have learned above should be sufficient for most uses of the Web.