NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows User's Guide

Uniform Resource Locators (URL)

NCSA Mosaic and the Web employ a standard addressing mechanism, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) scheme, to locate and retrieve documents anywhere on the Internet. 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 pathname-like descriptor locating the item on that machine.

NCSA Mosaic and HTML shield users from URLs most of the time; the URL is embedded in the HTML document source code that generates a highlighted hyperlink. When a user views a document and selects a hyperlink, NCSA Mosaic uses the URL in the document source file to automatically retrieve the indicated document.

URLs are discussed in ``A Brief Guide to URLs.'' This appendix also provides a pointer to the more complete Beginner's Guide to URLs.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications / mosaic-win@ncsa.uiuc.edu