The IETF has published the proposed standard version of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. This is a replacement for RFC 2396 that tries to actually be clear and consistent. When it comes to day-to-day use of URLs, this really doesn't change anything. However, the new spec should be a lot more helpful to authors of specifications that depend on URLs and programmers who write URL processing software. The inconsistencies and poor language in RFC 2396 has long been a thorn in the Web's side. It's led otherwise intelligent and agreeable people into flame fests on such subjects as whether a relative URL is really a URL or just a URL referencm, arguments that often degenerate into, "I know the spec doesn't say that, but that's what it should say" or "That's what we meant it to say." Some of these problems have had real consequences for other specs. This new spec is much cleaner and should alleviate a lot fo those issues. Update: Tim Bray pointed out that this is actually more akin to a W3C last call working draft than a proposed standard. It's not quite as far along in the process as I thought.