Core Concepts
URL design plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience and accessibility across various platforms, emphasizing the need for thoughtful consideration in creating URLs.
Abstract
Thoughtful URL design is essential due to its universal nature, working seamlessly across different browsers and devices. URLs serve multiple purposes beyond browser input, including scripting targets, references in physical books, and triggers for physical mediums like QR codes. Examples of great URL design include StackOverflow's balance between computer and human needs, Slack's use of natural language sentences in URLs, Jessica Hische's whimsical sentence structure URLs under a .is domain, and services like GitHub and NPM with URLs mapping well to their domain semantics.
Stats
URLs are universal across different platforms.
StackOverflow uses unique identifiers (:id) and human-readable paraphrases (:slug) in its URLs.
Slack incorporates natural language sentences into its URLs.
Jessica Hische uses fun third-person form of "I am" across her site's URLs.
GitHub's URLs map well to git semantics.
NPM allows easy navigation through specific package versions using structured URLs.
NPM CDNs like unpkg follow specific semantics in their URL structures.
Quotes
"As actionable triggers accessible via physical mediums, e.g. scannable QR codes or IoT device buttons."
"StackOverflow was the first place I remember encountering URLs that struck a nice balance between the needs of computers and humans."
"I remember being so intrigued at this effort to bring the design of the story-telling campaign all the way up into the URLs themselves."
"All of the nouns in her primary navigation follow this pattern, as well as her individual pieces of work."
"For technical products, this ability to navigate a website without necessarily seeing the user interface is a cool superpower."
"These kinds of shortcuts are super useful when you’re using a particular product."