Head First HTML with CSS

Q: What is important about the
absolute path?
A: The absolute path is what a server
needs to locate the file you are requesting.
If the server didn’t have an absolute path, it
wouldn’t know where to look.
Q: I feel like I understood the pieces
(protocols, servers, Web sites, and
absolute paths), but I’m having trouble
connecting them.
Sharpen your pencil
there are no
Dumb Questions
A: If you add all those things together
you have a URL, and with a URL you
can ask a browser to retrieve a page (or
other kinds of resources) from the Web.
How? The protocol part tells the browser
the method it should use to retrieve the
resource (in most cases, this is HTTP).
The Web site part (which consists of the
server name and the domain name) tells
the browser which computer on the Internet
to get the resource from. And the absolute
path tells the server what page you’re after.
Q: We learned to put relative paths
in the href attribute of our elements.
How can the server find those links if
they aren’t absolute?
getting connected
A: Wow, great question. When you
click on a link that is relative, behind the
scenes the browser creates an absolute
path out of that relative path and the path of
the page that you click on. So, all the Web
server ever sees are absolute paths, thanks
to your browser.
Q: Would it help the browser if I put
absolute paths in my HTML?
A: Ah, another good question, but hold
that thought, we’ll get back to that in a sec.
You’ve waited long enough. It’s time to give your new URL a spin. Before you
do, fill in the blanks below and then type in the URL (like you haven’t already). If
you’re having any problems, this is the time to work with your hosting company to
get things sorted out. If you haven’t set up an hosting company, fill in the blanks
for www.starbuzzcoffee.com, and type the URL into your browser anyway.
://
protocol Web site name absolute path
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