Short URLs information

Do you want the short or the long version?

Many people are still pasting long URLs in to messages in Conferencing Systems, Forums, Bulletin Boards and even Email which, when wrapped, do not work without some fiddling around with cut and paste.   There are free services that will convert these into short URLs.   Some people are reluctant to use these however, as they do not like to click links where they can not see where they will be taken to.   Fair enough, but the answer is to use both, like this:-

   Use of WordPress with Long URLs
   http://tinyurl.com/b95bw - which is:-
   <http://www.philhord.com/phord/wordpress-versus-the-long-url-
   post-slugs-or-how-i-finally-got-my-really-really-long-wordpr
   ess-urls-to-work-just-fine-even-when-they-get-broken-in-emai
   l-flexurl/>

Note that if the long URL is enclosed with a pair of <> brackets as above then any RFC-compliant clients such as the OLRs Parlance or Ameol will treat it correctly.   Note also it is helpful to others if you describe what is at the other end of the link.   Often URLs are posted with no hint as to where they go, or why one might want to bother, and these are annoying.   "You really ought to check this out" with a long complex URL, or just a short coded one, is not likely to be clicked by many people.   If it is not going to be clicked on, then it seems pointless posting it, at least to me.

You do have to trust that the person who posted the link did in fact give a matching pair, and the right description.   However, I wouldn't click on a long link, especially out on web, from some one I couldn't trust, even though I can read hex coded HTML.

The following table gives a comparison of three services which are popular among Cix users.   The "Make a shorter link" service takes you to a transition page with a pause, then redirect, so people can see where they will be taken to.   However with a very long URL the pause may not be long enough to decide if it is safe, so it is better to give both URLs as the link, so that the decision can be made before clicking.

There are many such services available on the web and others can be found using Google, however I can only recommend these three, as these are the only ones I have used myself.   If you use Firefox, and it is a good idea to use it for general browsing, then you can get an extension to automatically create a TinyUrl for the current page, and copy it to the clipboard,  c.f addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=126

It may be thought that all this isn't neccessary, as one can just highlight the whole URL, right click and select "browse link". However this depends on the client in use; this works in Ameol, in VAOS one can click on the last line. But since there are many clients in use it is better to provide links as in the example above.   Short URLs are very handy for those who use a PDA during the day, but browse from a desk top when they get home.   Having both types of link is ideal - the long one may give an idea of whether it's worth bothering or of interest, and the short one will make it easier to transfer it to the browser without having to sync or re-type a long link.

This does mean the link poster has to do a bit more work, but it is more efficient for just the one link poster to do this, rather than each of the link followers.