The address bar displays the website URL and can be used to navigate to files on a hard drive. Surfers can click on links or manually type in addresses, but should be cautious of phishing scams. Anonymous browsing sites provide their own address bar and use a proxy to hide the surfer’s IP address. Favicons can be displayed in the address bar and bookmark menu.
The address bar is the narrow text field at the top of a web browser that displays the address of the currently viewed website. It is also called the Universal Resource Locator (URL).
Website addresses that appear in the address bar begin with http://, which tells the browser that the page is written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML). If you visit a site to download files via File Transfer Protocol (FTP), the address in the bar will start with ftp://. The web browser can also be used as a file manager to examine files on your hard drive. In this case, the address bar is used to navigate to the file starting with C: or the chosen drive.
Surfers move around the web by clicking on active links which automatically paste the destination address into the web address bar. Another way to navigate is to manually type an address into the bar. If there is a typo, the web browser will show an error page or if a domain was purchased as typed, the browser will take you to that page. Often, bad web addresses are purchased from third parties to redirect traffic to an unexpected site. Phishing scams use a similar technique, using an alternate spelling of a legitimate site to trick people into giving them personal information.
Websites that offer free anonymous browsing provide their own address bar for surfers. The surfer must enter the destination Web address in the bar provided by the site, rather than in the bar of his browser. Using the slash provided, the anonymous service acts as a proxy. It passes all the information to the surfer’s browser leaving traces on the web, instead of the surfer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address.
It has become popular to have a small custom icon displayed in the address bar next to the website address. The icon, called a favicon, is often a company logo. When the site is bookmarked, the favicon will also appear in the bookmark menu.
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