addy.available@my.webpage

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

This phenomenon is an artifact of the fact that somebody went to the trouble of modifying the forum software to produce URLs with the IP in their address (i.e. 18.24.3.72) instead of the host name (i.e. greenspun). For more information on the motivation behind this see Time to Develop Your Internet Ping List. This is a Good Thing because it may allow the forum to continue to be used in case Y2K problems knock out Domain Name Servers [DNS]. Thanks, Phil & sysops for doing this. This is only a slight convenience for the visitors, and well worth the trouble. Our browser history records will recover the next time we visit these threads.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), December 25, 1999

Answers

You'll only have that happen if *you* explicitly browse to the site via IP address rather than domain name.

If you come to the forum via the name, you'll see the name prefixing each link; if you come here via IP, you'll see the IP instead.

The reason for this is that the links are relative -- they only have the dir path, file, and query, but *not* the server name or address.

Your browser assumes the address of the current page as the default address for relative links *on* the current page. So, if you get there via name, it'll prefix the name; if you get there via IP, it'll prefix the IP.

The visited link color, however, is based on a complete address, and since the complete address with IP is different from the complete address with name, the visited links lists are different.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 25, 1999.