Modify URLs

The internet uses Universal Record Locators (URLs) to express to computers where the user wants to go. We are used to clicking on links or searching and then clicking on links. But it is quite possible to navigate large parts of the internet by just directly editing URLs.

Software: This activity will work on any major browser, and any other browser that allows you to edit URLs, including mobile browsers.

Steps

Amazon

Amazon uses a consistent naming structure across all their country-specific sites.

  1. Search amazon.com (USA Amazon) for a product of your choice.
  2. Add “&s=price-asc-rank” to the end of the URL and hit enter. What changed about the page?
  3. Open a product of your choice.
  4. Edit the domain from “amazon.com” to “amazon.ca” directly in the URL bar and hit enter.
  5. If the product is available in both the USA and Canada, then you should see the page change to the Canada version which will likely have a different price, shipping time, and somtimes different reviews.
  6. Amazon product URLs are long, but they actually don’t have to be. Starting at the rightmost end of the product’s URL, start deleting bits of the URL till you find the shortest URL that will still load the product page. It helps to think about how the URL is structured while doing the activity.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia uses a very accessable naming structure. If you know what you want, there is no need to even search, you can just enter the URL directly.

  1. The Wikipedia page for the University of Toronto is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Toronto
  2. Try creating a URL that links to the University of Waterloo’s Wikipedia page and then enter that URL directly into your browser’s URL bar to check if you did it correctly.
  3. Try creating at least one other Wikipedia URL and directly visiting it.

YouTube

YouTube includes information in the URL like distance through the video so that people can share not only videos, but specific points in videos. Since the information is in the URL, it can be manipulated.

  1. Open this wonderful video of Dr Vaniea lecturing on ethics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZniJBygnX8&t=133s
  2. Try jumpping to different points in the video by modifying the URL.

Reflection questions

  • Have you ever tried directly modifying URLs before?
  • What most supprised you about this activity?

Other things to try

  • Try changing how you write URLs for git and for ssh.
  • Lookup YouTube random video generators

Learn more

Dr Vaniea does research on URLs and how people read (or can’t) read them. Below are some of her research papers: