Forum Moderators: mack
An individual scheme does not need to be classified as being just one of "name" or "locator". Instances of URIs from any given scheme may have the characteristics of names or locators or both, often depending on the persistence and care in the assignment of identifiers by the naming authority, rather than any quality of the scheme. This specification deprecates use of the term "URN" for anything but URIs in the "urn" scheme [RFC2141]. This specification also deprecates the term "URL".
And...
Further according to the contemporary view, the term "URL" does not refer to a formal partition of URI space; rather, URL is a useful but informal concept: a URL is a type of URI that identifies a resource via a representation of its primary access mechanism (e.g., its network "location"), rather than by some other attributes it may have. Thus as we noted, "http:" is a URI scheme. An http URI is a URL. The phrase "URL scheme" is now used infrequently, usually to refer to some subclass of URI schemes which exclude URNs.
So, the use of the initialism URL has been deprecated for quite a few years actually. Why do we continue to use it? I believe I corrected my ways a few years ago after reading enough of the RFCs to have been "trained" to use Yuri instead of Earl. ;)
For example, Microsoft help now uses a URI to locate help pages. And Linux GUI these days is just loaded with different URI schemes most of them buried beneath the surface where most users will never see them.
None if it is relevant to webmasters.
For the most part, all we care about is that tiny subset that starts with "http://"
And that, to me, is, was, and always will be a URL.
And that, to me, is, was, and always will be a URL
my point exactly.
less than a tenth of a percent of the best informed webmasters in the world are doing the strict usage of this terminology while discussing web-related minutiae among each other, so real-world success will be less than nil.
After saying that the term URL is deprecated, they go on to say:
An http URI is a URL
In as close to layman's terms as possible, why is URL incorrect now?
This specification deprecates use of the term "URN" for anything but URIs in the "urn" scheme [RFC2141]. This specification also deprecates the term "URL".
