Website reviews

If there is one thing that is guaranteed to annoy me when writing the web review, it’s an unwieldy URL. A URL (an URL?) is a universal resource locator, i.e. an address which specifies the location of a file on the internet. World wide web URLs begin with http:// – my concern, however, is how soon after that they finish.

It is not my concern alone, either. For if a website is reviewed here (or a particular page within a website is referred to) and the faithful reader wishes to view it for him or herself, then a problem arises. If you are reading the article online at the Journal’s website (www.journalonline.co.uk) then you can click through to the website directly. However, if you are reading the print version, you are going to have to type out the URL in full, all by yourself. Not such a problem if you’re visiting Hieros Gamos (www.hg.org), but if you want to peruse the 50 most recent cases from the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary (http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinionsApp/last50results.asp?searchtype=supreme&txt=False), then you’re going to get bored and give up before you reach the end.

Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com

Which is exactly where sites like TinyURL come in. Like a certain brand of rust treatment, this website does exactly what is says on the URL: it takes a lengthy URL and makes it tiny. Just like magic.

All you have to is visit the site, type (or cut and paste) the interminable URL into the textbox you’ll find waiting for you and – hey presto! A tiny URL. It really is that simple.

Just to prove how useful this really is, here’s one I prepared earlier. Let’s imagine that you’re writing a handout to accompany a talk you plan to give on the Master Policy. Obviously, you’d want to refer to the information sheet on the Society’s website (http://www.lawscot.org.uk/Public_Information/Public_Information_Sheets/public_info_master_policysheet.aspx) but who, realistically, is actually going to type in those 106 characters just to visit the website? Well, now no-one needs to risk repetitive strain injury, since that same webpage is now also available at http://tinyurl.com/l3fr5 – try it and see!

This is a free service and one of the earliest of the URL compacting services, which claims to have shortened and stored a staggering 24 million URLs.

DigBig

www.digbig.com

The same idea in a different (and slightly prettier) package comes from the British-based DigBig website. Type in one dirty big protracted URL, click a button and collect a shiny wee one in return.

For example, if you want to see a map of the Govan Law Centre (just a short hop from the statue of Sir William Pearce) you can forget the ungainly http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?local=h&scale=5000&title=Govan%20Law%20Centre&pc=G513LB&icon=x in favour of the bantam http://digbig.com/4mttd – 77% shorter!

In common with TinyURL, you can drag and drop a button onto your web browser’s toolbar, which then allows you to miniaturise any URL you happen to be viewing without having to take the trouble even to visit the DigBig (or TinyURL) site. That sounds a bit complicated, but it’s very well explained on either site and pretty easy to operate.

Doiop

http://doiop.com

Although Doiop does basically the same job as the others, its unique selling point is that it lets you choose the keyword that gets tacked on the end of the new, shortened URL. So the information sheet on the Master Policy we considered earlier can now also be found at http://doiop.com/policy – which is a bit easier to remember than the TinyURL version.

Of course, although all such services require that they not be used for illegal or nefarious purposes, not everyone will be happy about clicking on a link or indeed typing it into their browser when the URL gives no clue as to where they may be heading. The less than scrupulous might give a truncated URL which in fact relocates the user to a website with salacious or otherwise dangerous content. Therefore, good “netiquette” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette) dictates that you consider giving both the long-hand and compressed versions of the URL to allow your readers to choose.