Reply to “Making the World Wide Web an Easier Place to Talk About”

To sum up Tim Walton’s article Making the World Wide Web an Easier Place to Talk About in three words: don’t use www.

The irony is that “World Wide Web” can be said in just three syllables, yet the abbreviation WWW encounters a tongue-twisting nine! How can any abbreviation take three times the effort to speak than the very words it is an abbreviation of‽ “duh-bull-you duh-bull-you duh-bull-you”.

I have been a no-www for ages. However, I recently moved over to using www again. Despite it being unnecessary. The reason behind this decision was print media. It is easier to type a domain name www.example.com than to explain “come visit us at our website, example.com”. So in print, using www is a convenience.

Tim’s suggestion to use web.example.com has also struck me. I have, however, discarded the idea as being a dull replacement for something else that is also incontinent and unnecessary. It would do good in print, though!

My main reason for keeping www. is forward-compability. What if someday, the internet was replaced with the interwebs or something else. So if the replacement technology still would use domain names… Maybe web. would be preserved for the never version, and www. for older version. Like m. or mobile. is for the handheld/scaled down version….

Basically, the whole absolute URI-thing is broken by design. Deal with it.

Update: Read Silent no-www flamboyancy to configure Apache in a way that helps users ditch the www. habbit without directly bothering them.

« I want a desktop computer! | Home | Silent no-www flamboyancy »

One comment

I allways write http://www. I might be old fashion, but still …
On the other hand, I do use the phrase “World Wide Web” when reading http://www.

Comment by Kent Vegard Evjen at 2008-06-01 @223.

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