I think you're forgetting about the other modes, ftp:, gopher:
etc. Without being able to specify the transfer mode, you'd
loose a lot of functionallity of your browser.
The www bit is the de-facto way of ensuring that http requests
hit port 80 (or whatever) of the correct machine. It's also a
lot easier to remember www.swissbank.com than
ln1d335uss.dev.gb.swissbank.com. And you can't have just
swissbank.com as this would point to a domain rather than a
machine, nor can you simply prepend 'www' even though this
usually is the hostname or alias of the web server, it does
not have to be. And if you have many web servers in a single
domain you'd be in trouble.
Regards,
Nick.
-- Nick Taylor JFDI taylorn@gb.swissbank.com +44 171 711 3721 +44 850 319 024 "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" - Albert Einstein