HandwavingURLs (Am I the only one who likes to know where I'm going when I click a link?)
JordiGH@handwaving Web browsers just kinda hide urls now. I think most web browsers only show the domain.
@JordiGH Yes that's right, but I notice it the most when I hold a link on iOS to see the preview. It always shows the complete URL, and it's often terrible (particularly with Substack)!
Mike Taylor 🦕@JordiGH @handwaving Not Firefox.
cmeu@cmeu That's right, I have noticed this feature!
Daniel Gibson@handwaving
goatse.cx in base64
goatse.cx in base64
James Oh@handwaving
Very yes
Very yes
Azure Jane Lunatic@handwaving A set of rules that I helped draft (but was ultimately never rolled out) specified that people should explain the link if they pasted something non-obvious, shortened, or obscured in a particular IRC chatroom. And no, link cards do not solve the problem fully. (Alas.)
@azurelunatic This sounds like it could have been useful. I'm always a little frustrated when I *want* to share a link but what my computer adds to my clipboard is a shortened/obscured URL!
Sam Wronski@handwaving Microsoft introducing "safelink"s in Outlook that were impossible to scan as a user was one of the most frustrating changes they made to email.
climbertobby@runewake2 @handwaving arguably even less safe for attentive users.
And unusable with plaintext mails, I hate it.
@climbertobby @runewake2 Yeah I can imagine this is super annoying. The unfortunate result is that it would teach me to just click on the link to my the "safelink" go away (which is not great!).
Nux@handwaving Also browsing web directory trees.. Apache directory indexing vs the sodomy that is "s3" and similar.
@Nux That sounds really tough!
Denny Vrandečić@vrandecic I've seen this but it was before my time. Do you have experience with it?
@handwaving Ah, it wasn't about HyperCard, it was about the URL that I posted, what you would expect, and where it actually took you.
Also, I never used HyperCard -- it was long before I could afford an Apple computer.
@vrandecic Ha, it's funny: in my client the URL "resolved" into a preview that showed me Wikipedia immediately. I hadn't noticed this was an Apple URL! That's very strange, thanks for sharing.
Brian DearWorst of all are services like Apple News, which hides the news source and sends you to their own site before redirecting to the actual news site. It’s one of Apple’s most egregious WWW sins.
@brianstorms I don't use Apple News, but this does not sound good.
Sam Stephens@handwaving one thing Thunderbird does that I really like; when an email includes a link with the link text being an URL, and the link itself points to a different URL (usually tracking bullshit for the URL the text shows) Thunderbird asks you which URL to go to, so you can avoid the tracking.
@chopsstephens That's a pretty neat feature!
0xDE@handwaving I also kind of like having links that I can expect to remain valid (and be archived by archive.org if not) rather than links that, when I give them to someone else or future me, will just tell them "session expired".
@11011110 Yeah, this is a very relevant point. This isn't exactly the same issue, but I notice this when sharing papers; my university completely mangles the URLs so I can access them.
Edwin Groothuis@handwaving @fwaggle Double trouble if you have to use Office365 and your organisation has its own security device.
mah:~ $ 
@handwaving you need this to browse the web with sanity these days, there's also a filter included with librewolf for tracking parameters.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clearurls
@mah Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.
KayleeSerenada@handwaving Trusty helpful IT team: Make sure to always hover over and check links before you click them 😇
The hover text: 😈
ShadSterling@handwaving many of the links won’t even go to website.com, or even 3rdparty.com/website/gibberish, they’ll go straight to 3rdparty.com/gibberish. And with the worst of them, using the magic gibberish 3rd party link is the only way to log in
@ShadSterling Yes, this is the sad state of affairs at the moment.
oceaniceternity@handwaving whats even more bizarre is watching the URL's change as you use the site.
ArtemesiaThere is one particular prolific mastodon user (over 100k posts) who uses some form of af. liate. io link forwarder. They are dead to me. I wish people I follow would refrain from interacting with their posts.
Neil Brutalist@handwaving I was just complaining to a colleague that links nowadays are often no longer underlined text and the modern web breaks many of the conventions that made it all work so well, but being younger he didn’t seem to think it mattered. You hardly ever see a differently coloured link to indicate that you have already visited a page, for instance. I’m probably just a dinosaur for wishing that more pages were static (or server generated) html that can cope without JS.
@frobisher I definitely empathize! I suspect many have simply adapted/not known anything different, so this just seems natural.
André Rodier@handwaving no, you're not. The web in 2020s sucks...
@arodier74 @nigel I'm glad it's not just me!
nigelnope, not the only one.
This does my head in.
This does my head in.
elmuerte@handwaving Not to forget that in about 3 years or so that "redirect" link will no longer work while the actual destination still exists.
@elmuerte Yes, this is a sad future outcome.
Heliograph@handwaving hell no 😂 definitely wanna know
Paul Tourville@handwaving That's why I type in the domain name and navigate to the thing.
@TaoBear That's some dedication.
Maxilo OveritI regard embedded links as a honey trap. All of them. All of them.