Fully Qualified vs. Relative Paths

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247(v=vs.85).aspx#fully_qualified_vs._relative_paths

• "..\tmp.txt" specifies a file named tmp.txt located in the parent of the current directory.
• "..\..\tmp.txt" specifies a file that is two directories above the current directory.
• "..\tempdir\tmp.txt" specifies a file named tmp.txt located in a directory named tempdir that is a peer directory to the current directory.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6424114/slash-vs-tilde-slash-in-style-sheet-path-in-asp-net

·         / - Site root

·         ~/ - Root directory of the application

The difference is that if you site is:

http://example.com

And you have an application myapp on:

http://example.com/mydir/myapp

/ will return the root of the site (http://example.com),

~/ will return the root of the application (http://example.com/mydir/).