Over on Mastodon, Steve Randy Waldman posted this which struck me as true:
the practice many browsers have adopted of truncating URLs in the address bar to the hostname is emblematic of the decline and commercially driven infantilization of the web.
understanding URLs — their roles and the ways and whys of how they are constructed — was an elementary skill of the original view-source web.
hiding complete URLs encourages people to become ignorant consumers of mysterious information services, rather than informed participants in a public forum.
I fully agree, and it reminded me of learning to read bus and train schedules as a kid:
In 8th grade in San Diego we had few days of a pseudo home-economics. Among the tasks was to learn to read and understand a bus schedule and a train schedule. This was in the 1980s and one needed to do these things manually. Reading the timetables and their legends and doing work to plan a trip on X day at Y time was complex. A URL address has–to me–analogous complexity. But useful for wayfinding. Essential even.
Steve blogs at www.interfluidity.com
Go ahead and read a refresher on the parts of a url: web.dev/articles/url-parts
