Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee apologises for the irritating "//" in URLs India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the world-wide-web, has finally accepted that he could have created the web without the two backslashes, //, that Internet users often grumbled about. Almost two decades after his codes brought a new technological revolution in the world, Sir Tim said that 30 years ago when was in the process of developing the network he could not imagine that the omission of a single slash could become a nuisance for net users. The problem with // is that if the URL or web address has only one slash it shows a syntax error and the website fails to open. The Times Online quoted Sir Tim as saying at a symposium on the future of technology in Washington DC : "Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //." He added: "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time." Sir Tim told the audience: "Boy, now people on the radio are calling it 'backslash backslash'." He put up his index finger said: "People are having to use that finger so much." Sir Tim is presently the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which keeps an eye on the progress of the web.