Below is a table enumerating some frequently used schemes:
Scheme |
Short for |
Used for |
http |
HyperText Transfer Protocol |
Common web pages that are not encrypted. |
https |
Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol |
Encrypted and secure web pages. |
ftp |
File Transfer Protocol |
Transferring files through download or upload. |
file |
|
A file stored on your computer. |
URLs use the ASCII character set and require encoding for non-ASCII characters. URL encoding replaces non-ASCII characters with a %
followed by hex digits, while spaces are replaced by +
or %20
.