====== Uniform Resource Locator (URL) ======

A URL is effectively the globally-unique address of some //resource// (document, image, media file, etc.) on the Internet. URLs have three components. The first gives the access method and defins the protocol that the [[user agent]] (in the case of the Web a Web Browser) should use to connect to the server. Examples are ''http'', ''ftp'', ''mailto'', ''file'' and ''telnet''. The second part is the IP address or [[fqdn|Fully Qualified Domain Name]] of the host that has the resource: for example ''www.swan.ac.uk''. The third part is an address of the resource on the server and this normally takes the form of a [[unix_file_system|Unix-Style file path]], e.g.: ''/engineering/UndergraduateDegrees/''. Taken all together, a complete URL looks like: http://www.swan.ac.uk/engineering/UndergraduateDegrees/.

You will be most familiar with URLs that you type into the address bar of your browser, but the target of all links, images, flash-movies, CSS style sheets and JavaScripts that are to be found in a modern web page are also accessed by URLs. In fact the URL is so useful, it can be used (in any of the common forms) as a file name in Java!

//See also//: [[URI]].
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[[Glossary]] : [[glossary#A|A]] | [[glossary#B|B]] | [[glossary#C|C]] | [[glossary#D|D]] | [[glossary#E|E]] | [[glossary#F|F]] | [[glossary#G|G]] | [[glossary#H|H]] | [[glossary#I|I]] | [[glossary#J|J]] | [[glossary#K|K]] | [[glossary#L|L]] | [[glossary#M|M]] | [[glossary#N|N]] | [[glossary#O|P]] | [[glossary#Q|Q]] | [[glossary#R|R]] | [[glossary#S|S]] | [[glossary#T|T]] | [[glossary#U|U]] | [[glossary#V|V]] | [[glossary#W|W]] | [[glossary#X|X]] | [[glossary#Y|Y]] | [[glossary#Z|Z]]