The written format of SLURLs

Wander around the literature base for Second Life for even a short while, and you’ll notice that SL URLs are written in a variety of formats.

Pete Johnston from the Eduserv Foundation suggests the following:

Personally, I prefer the http URI form, e.g.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30

…not secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30 as

• It makes them URIs.
• It makes them “clickable” in tools that render http URIs as hyperlinks.
• If you do click on them you get a useful representation (a Web page) even if you don’t have SL client installed.

Though longer, and the shortness of SLURLS has been debated elsewhere, that seems more sensible from a usability point of view. It’s also the predominant URI scheme format.

So, unless there’s a counter-argument we’ve missed, we’ll stick with that for written references.