NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows User's Guide
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the standard addressing mechanism
used to locate and retrieve documents anywhere on the WorldWide Web.
Though they look complex, URLs are actually quite straightforward;
you might think of them as an extension of the pathname concept with
network information prepended to the filename. URLs are also surprisingly
universal; the standard was designed on the premise that "if it's
out there, we can point at it."
A URL consists of three parts: a code identifying the transfer protocol
to be used, an address identifying the machine on which the file resides,
and a full pathname locating the file on that machine.
For example, the Home Page for NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh is in
the HTML file /SDG/Software/MacMosaic/MacMosaicHome.html on NCSA's
WorldWide Web server. When it starts up, NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh
frequently retrieves this document automatically using the following
URL:
A typical URL
National Center for Supercomputing Applications / mosaic-win@ncsa.uiuc.edu