For those of you that are working on web-based projects, you know that the last couple of years have brought about significant shifts in the way that we think about URL’s.
Previously, we never cared much about any of the query string variables or format of the URL in the address bar as long as we could get to the site’s homepage.
But that’s not the case anymore.
Instead, many of us are much more mindful about the structure of our URL’s both from a search engine perspective, but also from a usability perspective.
To some degree, I’d even go as far as saying as the URL is a component of the UI of your project. For some, it goes beyond the way that you start it up – it’s the way that you access certain features.
Case in point: Accessing the login feature for many sites can be done by navigation the domain.com/login location.
Anyway, the guys over at Warpspire have a great article on the importance of good URL design and it’s highly worth your time if you’re working on the web.
But I’m excited. I’ve watched URLs change over the years. At times hard-linking was sacrificed at the altar of AJAX while other times performance was sacrificed to generate real URLs for users. We’re finally at a point in time where we can have the performance and usability benefits of partial page rendering while designing a coherent and refined URL experience at the same time.
Jimmy King says
Have you seen this?
http://ianhin.es/wrote-about/designing-urls-for-humans/
Tom McFarlin says
I had not – nice find. Thanks for sharing that. It definitely captures the value of clean URLs.