4 ms·
Hyperlinking words rather than including actual URLs seems like the simple solution. Every time someone pastes a URL into Twitter, it should be replaced with an
by chaosmachine 18y ago
Hyperlinking words rather than including actual URLs seems like the simple solution. Every time someone pastes a URL into Twitter, it should be replaced with an <a> tag and the word "link". 4 letters, and no 3rd party redirect required.
URL shorteners are great for newspapers printing links on paper, but on the internet, we've had this long URL problem solved since HTML 1.0.
- pclark 18y agoIt isn't as easy as encapsulating text in HTML. How would you deal with SMS? etc, etc.
- vaksel 18y agomaybe cell phone carriers could enter the 2009 and offer people linking in texts. How hard could it be
- pclark 18y agoso we've gone from changing twitter messages to changing SMS :)
- joshu 18y agoif sms is the best your phone can do (not a blackberry, iphone, etc) then just supress the link?
- pclark 18y agoI suppose. Feels like a step in the wrong direction if developers have to have in the back of their mind "will this make sense without a link?"
- gry 18y agoLink shorteners shorten the URL itself, they have little to do with the HTML tag. hxxp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=549620 vs hxxp://bitly.com/cjVY Given the 140 character limit, a 50% savings is monstrous. Having Twitter auto-link on display is no big deal, it's free -- as news.yc does. TinyURL was great in the day, it was a temporary stopgap until email clients quit breaking word-wrapped links. Since then and up until Twitter, I'd argue use cases for shortened links were near zero. If Twitter rolled their own, they could smooth out usability issues with shortening (i.e. display the full link or host when viewing via the web, to crawlers, etc.) -- edit: Changed http to hxxp to help clarify argument. News.yc auto-links http:// http://, so the benefit wasn't as clear.
- chaosmachine 18y agoWhat I meant was that URLs would be replaced with the word "link". <a href="hxxp://somelongurl.com/1234">link</a> Like that, except actually a link. Short anchor text eliminates the need for short URLs.
- gry 18y agoRight. What I'm saying is the HTML is cruft. <a href="hxxp://somereallylongurl.com/1234">link</a> vs hxxp://somereallylongurl.com/1234 vs hxxp://shortner.com/1234 The client will automatically href it. You're not saving anything...actually creating more characters. The URL benefits from shortening, not the link title.
- chaosmachine 18y agoEither way, it doesn't matter what the URL is when the user only sees "link". This is why tiny URLs are a solution to a problem the web doesn't have. Tiny anchor text is all that's needed.
- gry 18y agoThis is why tiny URLs are a solution to a problem the web doesn't have. Agreed, it solves little to nothing with the web. It is, however, helpful to Twitter and the problem/limitation SMS has. To my mention earlier, URL shorteners are growing with Twitter's popularity, which is why all the fuss is here, methinks.