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The Cult of Friendly URLs

Andy Hume
October 07, 2011

The Cult of Friendly URLs

URL design is really important. Important enough that we mustn't let a cult of 'friendly URL' despots screw it up for everybody.

During this discussion I'll sound off about the fundamentals of URL design. Why it should be included upfront as part of the high-level design of the site IA and UX design, and how getting it right helps web-based products successfully fit into the wider ecosystem of the web. How can you optimise URLs for different requirements, such as readability (by humans and machines), shareability, hackability, navigability, etc...?

Andy Hume

October 07, 2011
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  1. They help orient users in your architecture. [avoid] exposing the

    mechanism of how you run your server. “ “ Jesse James Garrett Tim Berners-Lee
  2. Clean URLs, RESTful URLs or user- friendly URLs are purely

    structural URLs that do not contain a query string “ Wikipedia
  3. Clean URLs, RESTful URLs or user- friendly URLs are purely

    structural URLs that do not contain a query string “ Wikipedia
  4. QUERY STRINGS ...contain data to be passed to web applications.

    “ Wikipedia the knobs of URLs “ Kyle Neath, Github
  5. RESOURCE OR SEARCH? /UK/Sussex/Brighton/North+Laine THIS IS A SEARCH BASED ON

    A STRING /maps/?q=North+Laine, Brighton, Sussex, UK THIS IS A REQUEST FOR A DISTINCT RESOURCE
  6. WHAT’S THE POINT? ...of making application state data friendly/clean? ...of

    exposing application state to users? ...of address bars? BIG POINT GOES HERE
  7. WATCH OUT ...for people trying to ‘friendlyerise’ application state ...for

    people trying to ‘friendlyerise’ search queries BIG POINT GOES HERE