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I've been curious about this too. I never know quite how to communicate that something is a web address if my audience is both technical and non-technical folks.

I wonder, though, if a better solution than going back to prepending www would be to prepend // instead. Shorter than http:// (or https:// as the case may be), but doesn't assume that www is a valid subdomain.

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> prepend //

Then the technical people think it's a comment, not a web address. Maybe :// would be better? Wait, that looks like some weird emoticon...

I like http:// because it's precise. EDIT: Wow, HN highlights that as a link. It goes to about:blank (on my browser at least).

> Then the technical people think it's a comment, not a web address.

They would be wrong. URLs beginning with // are scheme-relative -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-url-20120524/#resolve-a-string-...

Which actually makes it a worse substitute for http:// for a combined technical/non-technical audience that something merely potentially confusable with a comment by a technical audience.

If it's a URI. The issue here is there's no context to determine what it is, so the rules for parsing a URI aren't involved.

> :// would be better? Wait, that looks like some weird emoticon...

I would like to nominate the name "confused duck" for this emoticon.

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