First let me define URL. It's short for uniform resource locator. It's an address of a "resource" on the internet. This page you are viewing has a URL and is a resource. Look in the location box of your browser and you'll see it. It should look like the following:

http://www.rayslinks.com/GSD/Browser/trimmingtheurl.html

Images displayed within the page have these addresses also. The globe above is at the following address and is also known as a resource.

http://www.rayslinks.com/GSD/Images/clipart_skyspace_earth_029.gif

The http is called a protocol, and isn't part of the url, it tells the browser how to request and handle the resource. For more on this see The Parts of a URL.

Often when you surf to an old bookmark the resource you are looking for has moved. When this happens you have two choices, give up, or trim the url to see if it's been moved to another address on that same site. As much as we would like to be able to it isn't always possible to leave things where they were so pages get moved.

Ok, you're at a bad url, and that 404 error page is staring you in the face. Grab your trusty mouse, point at the location box and click it. The entire url in the box will become highlighted, so hit the end key now to remove the highlight and then use backspace to take the last thing on the url line away.

Let's find one right quick to try out. How about: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/oops.htm

Nothing there, so now we trim off the "oops.htm" and hit the enter key. Now we are looking at a page that looks like the one here.

This page is a directory listing just like one you look at in My Computer or File Manager on your machine. Not all servers will show you a page that looks like this, some restrict the ability to retrieve a directory listing. Many others will load a default file in the directory instead. The names of often used default files are usually one of the following:

• index.html
• default.html
• dirmap.html

Whichever result you get you may be able to find the resource you were trying to load in the first place by clicking through the resulting pages to it's new location.

Since I'm using an ftp server's page as an example above I'll give you another quick tip. You can email any page you're looking at in the browser to yourself so it's easier to find later. When you do you will receive an exact copy of the page with any images contained within it, and above the page in the email will be the page's original URL.

To mail the page to yourself just select File, Send Page from Netscape's menu and fill in your email address. In Internet Explorer select File, Send, Page by Email to do the same.

I find this to be a handy trick when surfing ftp servers. If I want to know what's there later without having to find the site again, I just email myself the page. Make yourself a folder in your email client to save them in, and all it takes to find files later is a browse through that folder. The links in the pages will work right from your email client in most cases. [older email clients may not support links]