Hello all!
One or two people have been having problems with the Asthma UK message board software (if I can call it that!) messing up long web links that they have pasted into their posts.
The best way around this is to go to tinyurl.com and use the tool there to shorten the link you want to post. That way, a long link like this one:
asthma.org.uk/how_we_help/c...
Becomes this:
...which is nice and short and won't be messed-up by the message board!
Cheers all!
Steve
(techie mod!)
Additional!
If you're worried that TinyURL links might be used to hide links to sites you might not want to visit, you can enable previewing on the TinyURL site by going to this page:
With previewing enabled, you get to see the full version of the TinyURL link before going to the page in question, so you can decide whether you want to visit it or not.
.............or you can put in your tiny URL plus the home page addy of your web site your linking to eg essexwt.org.uk Which will give people an idea about the website domain. (Saves navigating to Tiny page)
Nice idea, Kate, but that's far too easy to abuse. Allow me to demonstrate:
For more information about lobbying the government about asthma research funding, follow this link:
(This points to asthma.org.uk/how_we_help/i...
See? Easy. So, best to stick to letting TinyURL provide you with previews if you're in any doubt.
For the benefits of us nuclear scientist ""thickos"" what is a tiny URL and how does one ""do"" them?-I live in a world of valves and analogue systems-the niceties of computer use have passed me by-ta for any help.
Hi Bluejam,
Well new for me too - being the poster of the problematic long link ...
TinyURL is a redirection service. Apparently one can cut and paste a long URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or 'webpage address' into a window at the TinyURL website (tinyurl.com) to return a shortened link. The shortened link is convenient for inclusion in emails and forum postings - and gets around the problem of line breaks being inserted into long links that span more than one line in AUK posts.
Not sure if that's explained very well :).
Ginny
thanks for the info.. !
i don't like tiny urls, but what I want to know is why does this site break links, other forums don't seem to do that, the width on this site is so restricted, it's only using half the width of my screen down the middle, remnds me of the old days when screens were restricted to 80 characters wide.
I can answer those questions:
- ""Why is the width of the site so restricted?""
Because the default text size is small, short posts would probably fit on just one line. However, reading what would be very long lines of small text is much harder than reading shorter lines of similarly-sized text. This layout is also more compatible with accessibility standards.
- ""Why does this site break links?""
Because the software that runs the message board is half-baked at best! Don't get me started on the amount of nagging we had to do to get it to the state it's in at the moment...
Steve
(moderator)
Requesting medical information - moderator's message
