As with FTP more information on the relevance of this part of Interachie and how to use will occur later in the course.
The HTTP window is much like the FTP window, but it uses the HTTP protocol for transfers and uses a single URL field instead of four Server / Path / Username / Password fields. As with FTP Listing & FTP Download, the two HTTP commands open the same window, with the Get Listing or Get File option selected. An important difference between the two is that HTTP doesn't have the same kind of directory listings as FTP. On the web, a directory listing is really just a special web page with links to other files, which may or may not be in the same directory (or even on the same site), so HTTP Listing shows all the files linked to from the specified page, rather than all the files in the specified directory. Note: Interarchy understands client-side imagemaps, so files linked through imagemaps will be included in HTTP listing windows.
HTTP and FTP URLs contain some or all of the same information as the FTP Listing window. URLs encode this information in a very specific format, so programs like Interarchy can match the information to the right fields. An example of a complete HTTP URL is
http://peter:buddy@www.interarchy.com/dir1/dir2/file.html. The only absolute requirement is the hostname - Interarchy can guess the rest. Because HTTP URLs are so common, the HTTP Listing window uses them instead of the four fields in the FTP Listing window (which predate URLs).