You Don't Need to type HTTP:// or HTTPS:// in a URL

If you look in the address bar of your browser right now, you will see that the URL of this page on this website is https://alta.randomload.com/stories/https. You will find that, at the beginning of most URLs (short for Uniform Resource Locators), that the phrase https:// or http:// appears. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and the S in HTTPS stands for Secure. These basically tell the browser and your computer how to send and receive information to and from the servers where websites are stored. Every computer on the Internet uses this protocol to transmit data, which keeps things universal. In a URL, the https:// or http:// just tells your computer which one the server is using. There have been other methods of doing this in the past, but they are no longer used, and most browsers add in https:// automatically. If the other computer doesn't use https://, which needs a special "certificate" to work, then it defaults to http://. People often do not remove the https:// or http:// from links in typed documents, which in my opinion makes posters, physical documents, web pages, and other things look cluttered. But seeing how the browser completes this for you when you type an address, it's not really necessary to include. Next time you see the http:// or https://, just remember that you don't need to type it. It will save you 1 second of your very valuable time.