Hatrack River Forum: Please pay attention to the length of your links

This is topic Please pay attention to the length of your links in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :

There's a couple broken pages and I suspect some people probably don't know why that happens. When you put a link in your post that is larger than the normal width that text fits in on this site, the website increases the width- causing the entire width of the text in a thread to be greater than the width on the monitor. This makes it so you have to scroll back and forth constantly and it is very difficult to read.

To fix this, you can take your link to TinyURL, or you can use the html whereby you use a "[" then "URL=www.whateveraddresshere.com", then "]". Then you type the text that you want to appear. Then you end it with "[/URL]"

Not trying to be a nuisance, I just tend to avoid broken threads and I believe that's rarely what people want.

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

Actually, yes. Every broken link is there to get you to stop stop reading a thread.

But I'd love people to use TinyURL anyway. [Wink]

For those with Firefox, there's even an extension.

Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :

May I put in a word that if you DO use tiny url you say in your post where the link goes and if it is potentially not safe for work? I will not click on a tiny url link from work otherwise, since I can't see where it goes, and I've gotten some unpleasant surprises.

Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :

I've never understood how TinyURL is better than just making the link into text. Also, as ElJay said, it's nice to see where the link really goes.

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

Some links won't work properly with the URL tags. A fair number of wikilinks, for example.

ElJay, that's good to know. I'll try to keep it in mind.

Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :

*rushes off to secure "www.ohmygoshthisisthelongestdomainnameeveranditsgoingtobreaktheframesifitkeepsgoingonlikethismuchlonger.com"*

I'm gonna capitalize on all the traffic JB's driving my way and retire! It's perfect.

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Yeah, I'm not fond of tinyurl either. I prefer knowing where the link is going before I click on it. I don't like surprises.

Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :

You don't need tinyurl, you just need to use the UBB code correctly. There's a nice scripted button for it, and all.

Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
Some links won't work properly with the URL tags. A fair number of wikilinks, for example.

Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :

Curse you, de Spang!

*shakes fist*

Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :

quote:
http://www.ohmygoshthisisthelongestdomainnameeveranditsgoingtobreaktheframesifitkeepsgoingonlikethismuchlonger.com

[ March 23, 2007, 10:48 AM: Message edited by: mr_porteiro_head ]

Posted by Ela (Member # 1365) on :

Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny, too. [Smile]

Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :

TinyURL is really for URLs you want to dictate, write down, or paste into an email.

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rivka:
Some links won't work properly with the URL tags. A fair number of wikilinks, for example.

Uh, that's the forum's fault, right?

Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :

It's UBB code's fault. It doesn't like certain special characters (like %) being in links.