Once upon a time, webpages were created by hand-coding a text document using special formatting. Not much different to the way wordprocessing documents were created, with particular terms for particular effects, eg. H1 for a large heading, H2 for a sub-heading etc. All of these webpages were saved with short names ending in “.htm”, to denote them as HyperText Markup files – otherwise known as webpages. Now we have a proliferation of file types/endings, and more to the point, some very long names and preceding addresses. A free service can help you shorten these long names.

The exact address for a particular webpage is known as its URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. This consists of the website name itself (eg. http://merlinpacific.net), perhaps a series of subfolders (eg. /content/blogcategory/17/26/ for the list of all Computers articles) and finally the name of the webpage itself). Some website technologies make all this more obvious than others, some make the whole thing longer or shorter than others, some deliberately hide file names and locations.

Why would any of this matter? Usually, it does not. When you are browsing the Internet, rarely do you have to do more than type in the initial website name – after which you simply click on the links provided by the website to navigate around its contents and services. In fact, it is a poor website that does not enable you to navigate as desired quickly and easily via the mouse. However, on occasion, you or people you know may think a particular item is interesting enough to pass on. The choices are to save the webpage in its entirety and send it as an an attachment (what if it is multiple pages? What about the formatting?), to tell the series of links that were followed to get to the page (can you remember them? Do you want to retrace and make a note of them?), or to simply send the URL as shown at the top of the web browser.

But one of the problems with sending a URL is that many email programs automatically set the maximum line width to 80 characters or so. This means that if the URL is over 80 characters, the recipient of an email with this URL will see it on two lines. Many email programs further automatically force this long URL into two separate lines, so that even if the email shows this URL as “clickable”, clicking on the first line will only go to a link with that first half of the URL. Clicking on the second line will not work at all as it will be an invalid link (it has no “http://www.” to start).

Normally, recipients of such broken links have to copy and paste each part of the emailed URL into their browser, in the right order, and then click the browser's “Go” button. Such a terrible waste of productivity can be avoided by use of the free TinyURL service. Anyone with a great long URL that they wish to pass on to others (or put somewhere constrained for space, like the end of this article) simply visits www.tinyurl.com, pastes in the long URL, and clicks the “Make TinyURL” button. By way of example, the signup page for VIGNET is actually http://lists.spc.int/mailman/listinfo/vignet_lists.spc.int which converts to http://tinyurl.com/zcusl – far more manageable.

Another useful, free service from the wonderful world of the world wide web!

Questions & comments? Send to - Merlin Pacific IT provide effective & efficient business IT, see www.merlinpacific.net for details. Find this article and its links on merlinpacific.net, discuss it or any other IT topic via email with VIGNET (Vanuatu Internet User Group) - register free at http://tinyurl.com/zcusl