On Jun 2, 2005, at 1:37 AM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
At 11:42 PM Wednesday 6/1/2005, Julia Thompson wrote:
Dave Land wrote:
or, if you like big hairy URLs:
http://www.scraprap.com/webx?14@@.1e6f62b3
Aw, come on, that URL isn't big and hairy; it's not even 60
characters long! :)
"Big and hairy" requires that it at least extend onto a second line,
and of course be formatted so that the second line is not recognized
as the continuation of the first line, requiring the recipient to copy
the pieces and paste them together in his/her browser, thus quite
effectively deterring all but the die-hard from checking out the link
. . . :P
Well said, both of you. The original URL was bigger and hairier, but I
used the "send a copy of this article to a friend" feature to send it
to myself, and the link in the email was the less-hairy one above. I
readily admit that it was plain laziness that prevented me from
deleting the "big and hairy" comment.
Incidentally, in Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox newsletter on web usability
(http://www.useit.com/alertbox/) once included the following in his top
ten web-design mistakes: URLs > 75 characters, saying:
Long URLs break the Web's social navigation because they make it
virtually impossible to email a friend a recommendation to visit a
Web page. If the URL is too long to show in the browser's address
field, many users won't know how to select it. If the URL breaks
across multiple lines in the email, most recipients won't know how
to glue the pieces back together.
Dave
WWJD: What Would Jakob Do? Maru
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