Do we need // in safe url?

[bzee]

I was meaning to respond to the safe: vs safe://.

@joshuef

But as I said, safe: or safe:// … this is really just a question of what we want a browser to display by default in the URL bar, not what’s actually usable now (which is both).

Technically, safe: is not a URL. So, when dropping the //, you’d actually be dropping URL support. The // is part of the hierarchy and defines the ‘authority’. Both of these are URIs, but not URLs. This is stated in the RFC (the top one is the URL)^[1]:

         foo://example.com:8042/over/there?name=ferret#nose
         \_/   \______________/\_________/ \_________/ \__/
          |           |            |            |        |
       scheme     authority       path        query   fragment
          |   _____________________|__
         / \ /                        \
         urn:example:animal:ferret:nose

When talking about standards I think it’s very important to be correct about the terms and usage. Especially with these long-standing standards that are fundamental to the web.

@JoeSmithJr

My position is to keep as much as possible to as close as possible to existing conventions. Any deviation from the familiar that isn’t directly related to the vision is a distraction from it.

I couldn’t have said it better. Every deviation at this fundamental level will cause lots of consequences in implementations for years to come.