Try copy-pasting a link that has actual whitespace in its URL queries and see if it gets linkified correctly. Just because you can doesn't mean you should! A space is like the one delimiter that is applicable for separating out URLs from the context of a larger blob of text.
You are right. Seems firefox displays %20 as whitespace and converts whitespace to %20 when you use it. Chrome displays it as %20 but still converts whitespace to %20 if you try to use it.
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And now we can have whitespace in url queries but we are still using %20 everywhere because "that's standard"...
Try copy-pasting a link that has actual whitespace in its URL queries and see if it gets linkified correctly. Just because you can doesn't mean you should! A space is like the one delimiter that is applicable for separating out URLs from the context of a larger blob of text.
Browsers will often display %20 as a space, but that's not the same thing as spaces being legal within URLs.
You are right. Seems firefox displays %20 as whitespace and converts whitespace to %20 when you use it. Chrome displays it as %20 but still converts whitespace to %20 if you try to use it.
Space is not legal at the HTTP request level, because the opening line uses space as a delimiter like:
Have fun with newline and spaces/tabs conversions when allowing whitespace in URLs.