Uniform Resource Identifiers

ALSO CALLED: URI, Universal Resource Identifiers
DEFINITION: To paraphrase the World Wide Web Consortium, Internet space is inhabited by many points of content. A URI (Uniform Resource Identifier; pronounced YEW-AHR-EYE) is the way you identify any of those points of content, whether it be a page of text, a video or sound clip, a still or animated image, or a program. The most common form of URI is the Web page address, which is a particular form or subset  … 
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UNIFORM RESOURCE IDENTIFIERS DEFINITION (continued): …  of URI called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URI typically describes:The mechanism used to access the resourceThe specific computer that the resource is housed inThe specific name of the resource (a file name) on the computerFor example, this URI:http://www.w3.org/Icons/WWW/w3c_main.gifidentifies a file that can be accessed using the Web protocol application, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, ("http://") that is housed on a computer named "www.w3.org" (which can be mapped to a unique Internet address). In the computer's directory structure, the file is located at the pathname of "/Icons/WWW/w3c_main.gif." … 
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