Similar to an entry in a list of bookmarks, a URL objects provides direct access to an object not contained in the current folder but located somewhere on the web, on an FTP server, News server etc. A URL object may also be used to access a BSCW object in another folder or workspace on the same server (see section 4.7.6 and section 4.11).

A URL object basically consists of its name and the address, e .g. http://bscw.gmd.de/bscw_help-4.0/english/ of an object. You may enter these in a form when you create a URL object by clicking  File    New    URL   URL objects may also be created automatically from the search result page of a Web search: Select entries,  Edit    Copy   them to your clipboard and then  Edit    Paste   them in a folder.

The special action menu entries for URL objects are:
 verify   checks the availability of a URL;
 fetch   stores the (HTML-)contents of a URL in your workspace;
 rate   lets you rate the quality of the document or the object referenced by the URL on a 5-point scale (more in section 3.4.4.2).

These actions help to manage the links within your workspace or across the Web and support their shared utilization.