3 ms·
It somewhat matters aesthetically, but mostly people are going to ignore long random strings. UUIDs are at least visually kind of white noise, companies have n
by eternityforest 3y ago
It somewhat matters aesthetically, but mostly people are going to ignore long random strings.
UUIDs are at least visually kind of white noise, companies have no problem+with+links?that=look&like=this, so why do they care about UUIDs?
- skybrian 3y agoSome of us will strip off the crud to get the base URL, to avoid being tracked.
- bandergirl 3y agoapple.com/iphone You can't beat that. Or would you rather receive texts that include the following? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09V3HZ8B5/?pd_rd_w=DAycy&content-id=amzn1.sym.04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f:amzn1.sym.04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f&pf_rd_p=04e31e32-5e01-4048-8b59-a557891d595f&pf_rd_r=M1KXM468KNZJV189JBE7&pd_rd_wg=3O1uC&pd_rd_r=e51c1edc-213f-4c6d-b081-e23afa6bf4ab&ref_=vn_s_iwp&qid=1694453553 > companies have no problem+with+links?that=look&like=this Let's not match the lowest common denominator, shall we?
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y agoYou only really need this part: https://amazon.com/dp/B09V3HZ8B5 https://amazon.com/dp/B09V3HZ8B5
- bandergirl 3y agoYes but that's irrelevant, I used a real URL that you will receive in your texts. It's real life, it happens and it sucks. Let's not normalize it.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago[dead]
- traceroute66 3y agoNo. It's not irrelevant. As you have been told apple.com/iphone = www.amazon.com/dp/B09V3HZ8B5 The rest of what you posted on the Amazon link is tracking bullshit. Now, THAT is irrelevant !
- hot_gril 3y agoUsers aren't expected to manipulate URLs manually. If your URLs have extra stuff, that's what people are going to copy/paste into messages. Amazon product URLs are looong, but maybe people don't share them enough for Amazon to care. YouTube and Twitter put more effort into making them short.
- eternityforest 3y agoI wonder if this is something Unicode could address. You could have something like quote marks that mean "Anything between these is data that shouldn't be seen in digital media but should be printed" So you could have urls like: example.com?<a single icon>&productname=somethinghumanreadable
- hot_gril 3y agoThe browser would also have to understand not to copy that part by default. But HTTP disallows unicode chars in URLs. There could instead be some "sharable URL" web API, but it seems like a small enough problem that sites are content just providing a custom share button if needed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blowski 3y agoSure, if Amazon sold about 10 products, such a URL scheme would work great. Additionally, this constantly redirects to the latest version of the iPhone, whereas Amazon's URLs are pointing to a specific version. A more "apples to apples" comparison (pun intended) would be the MagSafe charger: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MHXH3AM/A/magsafe-charger?fnode=c1cdaf0f0784e147f01cac4f3d6f8aac75e0d753bdb7bff1a51aa5fd67439677a470a88d109571ff0002841d9c3bf91bfedf900f8a2ceb988a63d243c0e9564d24a6f91c791ef7fcce01fd80b0230b187fe4f48a23d67e6827907331d9550f0f https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MHXH3AM/A/magsafe-charger...
- insanitybit 3y agoApple doesn't need to create pages for millions of arbitrary items for sale.
- bandergirl 3y agoThe point is that you can always always always do better than a 100-character URL.
- hot_gril 3y agoCause some links are more likely to be shared, meaning they'll appear in a comment or SMS rather than just in your URL bar. Like if I copy a link from YouTube into HN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Uw9kgZ4QM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00Uw9kgZ4QM I'm sure they put some thought into not making it ?v=f6dde15a-3485-4f36-b0b9-a3b56fbc12ae.