No need for regrets, Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the father of the World Wide Web - regrets putting the double slash in URLs.

I really don't think that Sir Tim Berners-Lee should have any regrets - after all, without him our lives could be very different.

But the man who was instrumental in putting masses of information - whether in text, image, audio or video form - at our fingertips obviously has very high standards and he now concedes that putting two slashes into web addresses was a mistake.

We're all familiar with http://www. and so on, and I'm sure we've all typed it countless times. Hitting the slash key twice rather than once is no real inconvenience, but Sir Tim is adament that it's a waste of time.

As the Daily Telegraph's Ian Douglas points out, if he really wants to regret something, it should be the prefix 'www'. On paper (or rather, on screen) it seems fine, and it is perfectly easy to type.

But try saying it out loud. Three characters of three syllables each - a real mouthful. It would have been better if he had used the word 'web' instead.

However, we're all used to it by now - and when I tell someone a web address verbally, I leave out the www anyway. It's safe to assume that most people take the www as read, as they do the http:// part of the URL.

Besides, browsers today don't require you to type the http:// in - many don't even need the www. So, Sir Tim, please don't think that our opinion of you is lessened by the // - you're one of the most important people to have ever lived and mere punctuation is not going to change that.