The only use-case I've found for short URLs is in media broadcasts (or similar). It's the only scenario I find that shortening is necessary, as the audience will have to actually type out the URL. In text formats, you generally have access to hyperlinking text to the extended URL.
Short URLs: Why and How
141–150 of 172 posts
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#142I believe this is a rather naive posts on the subject of URLs and honestly wish it never made it to HN front-page, but seeing as we are here... lets go through the points made and how they conflict with each other... "You can remember them" Well, no. You might remember a few. But you are only going to remember so much. This has a very limited benefit. "You can tell someone" Yeah, but no. I barely tell people a domain…
URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX, but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it. Therefore, making those URIs most likely to leak into the UI/UX be user-friendly is very good advice.
> URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX
Why not?
> but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it
It seems like the opposite has happened. URIs were the default navigation UX, but we are slowly pushing them away.
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#143URLs generally do not matter to people. Quick, what’s the URL of this discussion? Will you remember it? Does that have any impact on your usage of HN? The vast, vast majority of website sessions start with a click. When people bother to type things in, they type them into search bars (reminder that in most browsers, the “address bar” is also the search bar). So be clear what you want from your URL structure. If you w…
If urls don't matter then why bother with domain names?
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#144I would love some sort of standard for "short" URLs that are primarily designed for sharing. This would serve as an alternative to the current – usually hierarchial – URLs that are primarily designed around SEO.
It would love to see something like a "short" link tag. For example imagine that YouTube provided the following tag on video pages Then copying the URL could copy the short link instead. That being said I like when the URL is readable. The YouTube example works because everyone knows that YouTube is a video. Presumably for non-video links they could use something like /user/foobar to differentiate from their "main pr…
You could also specify the corresponding short URL of a page with a META tag:
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#145I believe this is a rather naive posts on the subject of URLs and honestly wish it never made it to HN front-page, but seeing as we are here... lets go through the points made and how they conflict with each other... "You can remember them" Well, no. You might remember a few. But you are only going to remember so much. This has a very limited benefit. "You can tell someone" Yeah, but no. I barely tell people a domain…
URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX, but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it. Therefore, making those URIs most likely to leak into the UI/UX be user-friendly is very good advice.
Well, thats the thing, most of the advice has a bit of truth to it.
However it is very limited benefit to the extent that the larger argument/conclusion (shorter URLs are better) is wrong.
It ignores many valid points raised here, like URLs that include structure (be it date-based, or taxonomy, or hierarchy) provide immense value in many cases.
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would love to see something like a "short" link tag. For example imagine that YouTube provided the following tag on video pages Then copying the URL could copy the short link instead. That being said I like when the URL is readable. The YouTube example works because everyone knows that YouTube is a video. Presumably for non-video links they could use something like /user/foobar to differentiate from their "main pr…
You could also specify the corresponding short URL of a page with a META tag: Just because it's not a standard doesn't mean you can't use it. This is sort of futureproofing incase it does become a standard.
I don't care if it is a "standard" but it would be nice if people agreed on something. Is the meta version being used anywhere?
It looks what I described is very existing to the spec published here: https://microformats.org/wiki/rel-shortlink
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX, but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it. Therefore, making those URIs most likely to leak into the UI/UX be user-friendly is very good advice.
> URIs are not supposed to be part of the UI/UX Why not? > but they unavoidably have leaked and will continue to leak into it It seems like the opposite has happened. URIs were the default navigation UX, but we are slowly pushing them away.
> Why not?
Because if you have enough of them for internal purposes then they can't have meaning to users.
> It seems like the opposite has happened. URIs were the default navigation UX, but we are slowly pushing them away.
URIs were the default entry point for navigation, and they still are. That's one way in which they leak, but these are intentional so maybe best not called "leaks". There's also the URIs that leak in other ways, like in the browser status bar, and so on.
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly http://merl.in has been idle for the past 10+ years, and I have not been able to get in touch with the owners...
My name is Justus, and I had my eye on https://just.us for years. It was just the photo gallery for a couple’s 60th anniversary dance. I checked every year on the expiry date to see if they renewed. Every year they did. One year I forgot to check and now the domain is parked and for sale for $288k.
I've been waiting years to try and get jo.sh but it's a heckin premium domain and doesn't expire until 2027 (registered in 1998)
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds more like a workaround to a website with poor navigation and UX, but ultimately you are still at the mercy of the website, eg if they have /articles/ links but throw 404 when you try to access /articles directly. It's up to the website to choose how navigation works, and I don't think we should constrain the structure of website urls just to support these hacky workarounds. Now there are other reasons for…
> It's up to the website to choose how navigation works Yes, and they should live by their choice and implement whatever is implied by their semantics. URLs also have their own affordances and I expect to be able to act upon them.
Url hacking is a clunky and extremely uncommon method of navigation. It should be the least of the website's concern. We don't design our doors based around the 0.01% of people that get in by kicking them down.
Re: Short URLs: Why and How
#150I don't like this at all - there is value in a hierarchical naming structure - even if it doesn't represent actual directories . A simple example is: https://www.kozubik.com/ ... where you can find "items": https://www.kozubik.com/items/ ... and one thing inside of "items" is an article on NDS emitters: https://www.kozubik.com/items/nds/ ... which contains supporting multimedia objects: https://www.kozubik.com/items/…
Besides the hierarchical information, a good slug can already tell you a lot about a page without the need to open it at all. I'd argue that https://sive.rs/short-urls-why-and-how would be much more valuable than https://sive.rs/su
I suppose a middle ground is something like https://siv.rs/short_urls
I do this on my own blog. e.g. a post titled "Mr. Robot Hides Data on Audio Disks, And So Can You! (Season 3 Spoilers)" has the URL https://jszym.com/blog/mr_robot_steganography/ and not the WordPress style https://jszym.com/blog/mr_robot_hides_data_audio_disks_so_ca...