Tim wrote:

> > Can someone tell me what these little buggers are all about?
>
> Encoded characters. They might be trying to hide them from prying
eyes, or
> they could be characters that need encoding to be part of the URI
(due to
> the rules of what characters are allowed in them).

But I've found that the URL works when I remove these
'characters'. Which incidentally, 3 hex digits is the wrong
number for either 1 or 2 characters. Also note, in one case
I found that these 3 character were within the http:// expression.
Clearly these characters are supposed to be ignored.
But when did this become a standard that browsers adhere to?
It seems to be an attempt at preventing spidering.