And have the browsers still go to a site originally registered as a "www.blahblah.com"?

For example: TSN - Canada's Sports Leader (http://www.tsn.ca) is the original URL, you can still get there with TSN - Canada's Sports Leader (http://tsn.ca). (Hover over the links to see the URL in the status bar) Is this true for all www URLs?

I rarely use the http:// or the www. And most often I get the site I am looking for.

This is because the browser tries both options or the website is registered with both "www.example.com" and example.com, that way it can accepted both requests from the browser.

That's what I was wondering but, in doing a little research, it seems that the function resides in the web server where the site is hosted: Drop the 'www.'? - HTML Dog Blog - HTML Dog (http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000007.php)

this is because the browser tries both options or the website is registered with both "www.example.com" and example.com, that way it can accepted both requests from the browser.
Actually, it's a DNS related issue. DNS is where people register a domain name (for example askmehelpdesk.com). A DNS entry is set up for "www" to point to a specific IP address (this one is 69.16.220.231). The www, combined with askmehelpdesk.com, gives you the web site located at 69.16.220.231 when you type the full thing in. You can also set up just regular old askmehelpdesk.com with one of these entrys. Most people do this, and that's why you can get to it from both addresses. Most, but not all.

*Edit* Ben, I just read your post again. I read it wrong the first time, you are right that it's registered both ways.

I don't see any posts from Ben or KeepItSimpleStupid in this thread. Is it just me who doesn't see these posts?

I don't see any posts from Ben or KeepItSimpleStupid in this thread. Is it just me who doesn't see these posts?
I was referring to benn11... I see his, and I quoted it in my other one. The post from KISS was deleted, and I just responded to what he said... mine didn't make much sense without his. It wasn't really on topic, either. So, I deleted it.

But was his post here originally?

For a few minutes.

Weird. Thanks for letting me know I'm not losing my mind. :)

I deleted my post because it was getting too complicated to write bypassing all of the "parse urls in message" and I was short on time.

Maybe I'll simplify it a bit. http:// is the part of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that specifies port 80. Port 80 is where the machine which is looked up from the DNS system will respond with particular requests allowing your browser to render a page.

The browser will assume that all requests are for port 80 unless told not to. It can be told to look at port 79, for instance if www.x.com was specified as www.x.com:79.

Some other URL prefixes are file://, https://, and ftp://. Telnet:// has been depreciated.

There are instances where x.com will not respond, but www.x.com will. They could actually be two different machines entirely. Thus it's more likely that it's an alias in the DNS entry.

The browser does it's part too by guessing. The .com domain seems to be tried first and the www prefixed to the url and that is tried. I can't swear to it, but it makes sense. So, all the other domains like .biz will be left out.

I'm guessing that the proliferation of the World Wide Web became the start of www. The addition of www to the URL made it easy for everyone because they didn't have to reconfigure what they were using for their company.