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Welcome to the age of online word counting tools!

Whether you're a seasoned writer or simply a web enthusiast, we are now firmly entrenched in the era of word counts. From navigating character restrictions on social media to meeting word requirements in corporate documents, if you've been writing, you've been dealing with word counts, knowingly or unknowingly.

Viewtools URL Encoding

For worldwide interoperability, URIs must undergo a rigorous transformation. Here's the two-step ordeal:

Convert the character string into a sequence of bytes using the UTF-8 encoding, as if you're translating it into a cryptic language.
Now, convert each byte that isn't an ASCII letter or digit into %HH, where HH represents the hexadecimal value of the byte, making it sound like an alien code.

For instance, take the word "François" – it's encoded as Fran%C3%A7ois. The "ç" is transformed into UTF-8's cryptic bytes C3 (hex) and A7 (hex), and then written as the utterly mysterious "%c3" and "%a7."

This can turn a simple URI into a baffling sequence (up to 9 ASCII characters for a single Unicode character). The idea is that browsers only have to reveal the decoded form, keeping the cryptic stuff behind the scenes. Many protocols can also send UTF-8 without this %HH madness.

But what's URL encoding really? Well, it's this strange practice of replacing certain characters in a URL with triplets consisting of the percent "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. Those digits represent the numeric value of the replaced character – it's like translating URLs into a secret code.

And, by the way, let's not call it URL encoding; it's percent-encoding. Because this weird encoding isn't limited to URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) but can be applied to any other mysterious URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers), including cryptic URNs (Uniform Resource Names).

So, which characters are allowed in this cryptic URL world? They fall into two categories: reserved and unreserved, plus the elusive percent character as part of a percent-encoding.

Reserved characters are the ones that sometimes have special meanings, adding a layer of cryptic intrigue. Unreserved characters are the innocents in this game, with no cryptic meanings. You can encode them, but it's better if you don't – they are:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_.~

Now, reserved characters are the cryptic masterminds who must be encoded only under mysterious circumstances. They include: !*'();:@&=+$,/?%#[]

So, when and why would you delve into this cryptic URL encoding madness? Well, when data from cryptic HTML forms is sent to the server in an HTTP request message, things get cryptic. The form field names and values undergo this cryptic encoding, and they're sent via cryptic GET or POST methods, or even historically via cryptic email. The default encoding is based on ancient cryptic rules, but with some cryptic modifications. The data's MIME type? It's application/x-www-form-urlencoded – as cryptic as it gets. Cryptically, this data ends up in the query component of the request URI in an HTTP GET request. In an HTTP POST request or email, it's tucked away in the cryptic body of the message, with the media type cryptically named in the Content-Type header.

So, there you have it, a glimpse into the world of cryptic URL encoding. For those who dare to decode its secrets, it's a cryptic adventure indeed!