Can I change all my http:// links to just //?
I tested it thoroughly before publishing. Of all the browsers available to test against on Browsershots, I could only find one that did not handle the protocol relative URL correctly: an obscure *nix browser called Dillo.
There are two drawbacks I've received feedback about:
- Protocol-less URLs may not work as expected when you "open" a local file in your browser, because the page's base protocol will be file:///. Especially when you're using the protocol-less URL for an external resource like a CDN-hosted asset. Using a local web server like Apache or IIS to test against http://localhost addresses works fine though.
- Apparently there's at least one iPhone feed reader app that does not handle the protocol-less URLs correctly. I'm not aware of which one has the problem or how popular it is. For hosting a JavaScript file, that's not a big problem since RSS readers typically ignore JavaScript content anyway. However, it could be an issue if you're using these URLs for media like images inside content that needs to be syndicated via RSS (though, this single reader app on a single platform probably accounts for a very marginal number of readers).
The question of whether one could change all their links to be protocol-relative may be moot, considering the question of whether one should do so. According to Paul Irish:
2014.12.17: Now that SSL is encouraged for everyone and doesn’t have performance concerns, this technique is now an anti-pattern. If the asset you need is available on SSL, then always use the https:// asset.