Yea.

Hasn't this poor dead horse been beaten enough already?

Ignored.

I don't understand what the big deal is. Did Fodor's used to be a different way???

Sorry, I don't get the issue on posting links....

The issue is that long URLs force your browser to scroll horizontally, like this:

http://www.americanscientist.org/tem...aaa7tndspTdaHL

And not only that, the Fodor's program stops building the link at all sorts of characters that it should skip (the semicolon in this case). So not only are the links unwieldy, they're also wrong.

Shouldn't this be fixed? It would take ten minutes.

A big, fat YEA.

Opposed, though it seems Robespierre is only interested in opinions that match his own.

I prefer to see the FULL URL as given rather than a shortened one.

And whilst I have long used tinyurl when sharing long links with friends, I'd hesitate to follow such a link when posted by a stranger.

YEAH to the vote to fix this mess.

NAY to not showing any personality! LOL

Jules

:s

Kavey, I welcome other opinions. I will argue the merits of my position, and you argue the merits of yours. Perhaps one of us can change the other's mind.

Why do you want to see the full URL when most of it (the part beyond the server name) carries no useful information? Tinyurl is a partial solution. Convince me.

I'm in favor.

Put me down for a yea if they can fix the whitespace delimiters on the href part. Hate to have it lost AND not have it show up in the display. Although if someone was quoting several articles from the NY Times, they'd all look the same I guess, so the ellipse isn't a bad of idea really.

Thought this was kind of funny though...

&quot;<i>Just yea or nay</i>&quot;
&quot;<i>Nay</i>&quot;
&quot;<i>do you have a reason, or are you just being obtuse?</i>&quot;

&quot;<i>Convince me.</i>&quot;

LOL

Here's one story from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com...06050167

And here's another: http://www.nytimes.com...06050168

I don't really see what information is added by using the ellipsis construction.

&quot;yea if they can fix the whitespace delimiters on the href part.&quot; Okay, that was part of the initial proposal. Everything from the http:// to the next [space] is the URL (or the period in the [period][space] case).

I'm convinced--my screen isn't big and I often don't read long threads if I'm going to have to use horizontal scrolling every few lines. Fix it, Fodors!

Robespierre---I have got a nice little laptop computer that has some things it needs fixed on it and you seem like just the brain for the job!!

If I be your friend, will you offer techie help?

yea

see :) I told you to repost on Monday when people would be more serious! :)

I, like Faina2, will say : whatever works...as long as it gets me there.

But I do hope Robespierre gets what he wants.
I suspect he won't stop until he does! B-)

&quot;yea if they can fix the whitespace delimiters on the href part&quot;... uh, yeah. I was agreeing with you. No worries, the royalties are all yours big guy. :)

I suppose it doesn't make that much difference whether they tagged a few characters on from the end of the original url. I was just thinking about the normal standards people may be used to seeing on other forums. URL shortening is done all the time on the PHP style boards, when people don't use the tool that tags the link. I noticed a lot of them do the ellipse. Not that much reason to be like everyone else, but eh... thought it might be familiar to the new folks. Doesn't matter that much to me, but thought a few qouted articles would be easier to distinguish which ones had already been chosen if each were a little unique, rather than:

www.nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com

But in the end, it doesn't matter that much one way or the other.

Sorry Robespierre that I didn't see your response earlier this evening... And thanks for showing the point, tho it does make it difficult to continue to follow this thread LOL.

I'm with you that for most users, anything after the domain is gobbledy-gook, and the longer it gets the more our eyes glaze over. But (perversely), our user testing showed that they preferred seeing something more than just the initial domain. Even if 06050167 doesn't mean anything at all to the viewer, at least s/he can determine that it's different from 06050168....

Now really, we just need browsers to be better at handling long strings - haha! It really is too annoying at times. I agree that it would be great for Fodor's to try and fix their UI... But I do wonder what priority a free service (cost center) gets at Fodors.com - I know it would be pretty low at most places I've worked! ;)

P.S. I think the technical aspect that bothers me the most on these boards is that you are never returned to the forum Topic you were last at, so I find I repeatedly have to select the country and search again. Same is true if you're posting a reply from viewing the threads you've participated in - it just takes you back to the larger forum level. That would be pretty easy to fix with a little code upgrade... Ah, dreaming! O:-)