In the early days of the Web, a path like this represented a physical file location on the Web server

Note: When specifying URLs to load resources as part of a page (such as when using the ,

Absolute URLs vs relative URLs

What we saw above is called an absolute URL, but there is also something called a relative URL. Let’s examine what that distinction means in more detail.

The required parts of a URL depend to a great extent on the context in which the URL is used. In your browser’s address bar, a URL doesn’t have any context, so you must provide a full (or absolute) URL, like the ones we saw above. You don’t need to include the protocol (the browser uses HTTP by default) or the port (which is only required when the targeted Web server is using some unusual port), but all the other parts of the URL are necessary.

When a URL is used within a document, such as in an HTML page, things are a bit different. Because the browser already has the document’s own URL, it can use this information to fill in the missing parts of any URL available inside that document. We can differentiate between an absolute URL and a relative URL by looking only at the path part of the URL. If the path part of the URL starts with the ” / ” character, the browser will fetch that resource from the top root of the server, without reference to the context given by the current document.

Examples of absolute URLs

In this case, the browser will call that URL with the same protocol as the one used to load the document hosting that URL.

• to create links to other documents with the element;
• onesto link per document with its related resources through various elements such as

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