Long links

[Guest]

Is there anything that can be done on this forum about long links that mess up the formatting of the rest of the page? When you post a link, first you are prompted for the URL, then the next dialog prompts for the link text. The URL can be as long as necessary; the link text should be fairly short. Is it possible for the webmaster to run a script on all the forum pages that truncates the link text to a reasonable length so that the formatting doesn't get so messed up? That would really help the readability of this forum. Another possibility that would help on future posts would be to limit the number of characters available for the link text. In the meantime, it would be nice if posters wouldn't use the URL for the link text.

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

I think it's usually more that people are not aware of the availability of the URL link option and simply just paste the link into their text. Using the URL tag properly will, of course, trim things down quite a bit. I think it's just a matter of making people aware of the feature.

-Jim

[Guest]

Originally posted by ecphora:
... it would be nice if posters wouldn't use the URL for the link text.

It would be useful if you offered an example so we can follow.

[Guest]

Originally posted by Jonathan Townsend:
It would be useful if you offered an example so we can follow.

He's talking about difference between:

This

and

this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/078671 ... 20?ie=UTF8

On my forums, if I see a really long URL (which can mess up the formatting sometimes forcing sideways scrolling), I just go in and fix it.

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Aguilar:

Originally posted by Jonathan Townsend:
[b]It would be useful if you offered an example so we can follow.

He's talking about difference between:

This

and

this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/078671 ... 20?ie=UTF8
... [/b]

Thanks, now what do we need to do with a URL we can cut and paste in place to make things nice as requested?

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Down below the box where you enter text, there's a section with smileys and a bunch of buttons. Those buttons allow for several interesting formatting options, which you can read about by clicking the "What is Genii Code?" link below them.

For this discussion, we're interested in the "URL" button, which is the first one in the block of Genii Code formatting buttons. When you want to insert a link, click that URL button. You will then get a little popup which asks for the address of the site you wish to link. Enter in and click the OK button. You will then be asked for the link text. This is the text that will appear in place of the full link. Enter that and then click the OK button. This will then automatically enter the code for the url into the text input box. You can then use the Preview Post button to see how it will actually appear to everyone else.

-Jim

[Joe Pecore]

Hit the little button called "URL" in the "instant Genii code" section while your editing and follow the instuctions or enter the code manually using:

Code: Select all

[url=http://really_long_url_here.html]short_text_here[/url] 

[Guest]

Thanks for helping me to explain this problem, guys. I am an old-fashioned C++ programmer and I have no experience administering web servers and discussion forums, or with today's popular scripting languages. However, it seems to me that it should be possible for the webmaster to write a script that would go through all the forum pages, look for long text between [url]and[/url] tag pairs, and truncate any excessively long text. This would fix all the existing links. To prevent long links in the future, there may be a way to parse the posted text when the poster presses the "Add Reply" button and prompt the poster to shorten the link text. That's what I would try to do. Someone more knowledgeable than I may have a better idea.

[Guest]

if I wanted to get "http://really_long_url_here.html" into something nice

1) [ctrl][c] to get the url from its source
2) press the url button
3) then paste the URL into the first dialog box
4) then type in the "label" I want to see on the post?

Done here, let's see;

Label

How's it look?

:)

[Guest]

...or simply go to www.tinyurl.com

It does all the work for you.

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Originally posted by Jonathan Townsend:
How's it look?

Great, Jon! But it looks like your link doesn't work. ;)

-Jim

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Originally posted by ecphora:
Thanks for helping me to explain this problem, guys. I am an old-fashioned C++ programmer and I have no experience administering web servers and discussion forums, or with today's popular scripting languages. However, it seems to me that it should be possible for the webmaster to write a script that would go through all the forum pages, look for long text between [url]and[/url] tag pairs, and truncate any excessively long text. This would fix all the existing links. To prevent long links in the future, there may be a way to parse the posted text when the poster presses the "Add Reply" button and prompt the poster to shorten the link text. That's what I would try to do. Someone more knowledgeable than I may have a better idea.

Ecphora,
You are correct that it is very possible to do that. The only problem is, as I stated in my first post is that most of these long links come from people who DON'T use the [url] tag in their posts. They just paste the link directly into their post, without using any kind of tag. It'd be a bit more difficult to write a script to handle that (though not entirely impossible -- it'd likely miss certain cases, but it could handle most).

-Jim

[Guest]

Ok. Now I understand what you're saying, Jim. Are you sure that there are no [url] tags when you paste a link in like that? As a test, I'm going to paste a URL in, then look at the page source and see if the [url] tags are automatically inserted. Test link: http://geniimagazine.com/forum

[Guest]

My test shows that an html href tag is inserted. So same idea, a script could scan for long href text. By the way, there are some humorous comments in the page source that our webmaster has inserted for our enjoyment.

[Steve Snediker]

LOL - Yes, hidden messages in HTML.

Meta Tags and HTML Editorial Comments...My favorite reading material. :)