BibLaTeX, especially when used with Biber, offers the most powerful and sophisticated handling of bibliographies. It has been designed with web resources in mind from the start and offers extremely nice ways to format a range of resources.
For example:
- all entry types support the
url and urldate fields for specifying URLs and dates accessed;
- all entry types support
doi and @article supports eid;
- dedicated
@online entry type for specifically web-based resources;
- the
eprint, eprinttype and eprintclass fields are available which allow much neater, more concise formatting of references for electronic resources e.g. you can use the JSTOR reference rather than giving the full URL and, if hyperref is loaded, the information will be hyperlinked automatically;
- you can easily extend the
eprint facility to cover additional resources.
For example, to add a JSTOR paper, I would use something like this:
@article{some-paper,
author = ...
eprint = {123456789},
eprinttype = {jstor},
...}
For resources which are not known to BibLaTeX by default, I extend the eprint facility by including additions in a personal biblatex.cfg. For example, here is the code I use for eprinttype gutenberg:
\DeclareFieldFormat{eprint:gutenberg}{%
Project\space Gutenberg\space ebook\addcolon\space
\ifhyperref
{\href{http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/#1}{\nolinkurl{#1}}}
{\nolinkurl{#1}}}
\DeclareFieldAlias{eprint:GUTENBERG}{eprint:gutenberg}
Then I can use something like this in my .bib file:
@article{some-ebook,
author = ...
eprint = {123456789},
eprinttype = {gutenberg},
...}
Additional styles may extend these facilities further and styles are generally easier to customise than is the case for BibTeX files. (You don't need to speak bst to change things!)
You can also use remote databases directly in some cases and use a wider range of downloadable bibliographical database formats. (You are not restricted to .bib files.)
Here is an example based on the sample .bib file supplied with biblatex:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[sort cites=true, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\begin{document}
\cite{ctan,kastenholz,baez/article,wilde,baez/online,itzhaki,wassenberg,markey,sigfridsson}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
To compile:
pdflatex <filename>.tex
biber <filename>
pdflatex <filename>.tex
You could replace pdflatex with latex, xelatex or lualatex as required.
natbiband with whatever style or BibLaTeX with Biber (preferably) or BibTeX (if necessary). Second, if you use a.bibdatabase file as you would with either of those approaches, there is the question of which entry type is best suited to online sources. But these are different, though connected, questions, and it would be helpful to clarify which interest you. (This is taggedbibtexwhich suggests NOTbiblatex.) – cfr Nov 09 '14 at 22:52\url{...}method in references with bibtex, without understanding what is happening. Perhaps you could write an answer explaining different methods? – hhh Nov 09 '14 at 23:03\url{...}mess :D – hhh Nov 10 '14 at 01:34