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LTH,
As you may have noticed, if you post a crazy-long URL, such as one from Amazon or the city of Chicago, instead of word-wrapping nicely, it stretches the page width out. This makes it a pain for people to read the thread, especially if they're trying to do it on a laptop.
Instead of enjoying your witty contribution, they're looking at your post and thinking, "Scrolling Horizontally Is Tedious!"
To avoid this dread condition, you can enclose the URL in brackets, like this:
[url=rtmp://crazy_long_link_that_stretches_the_page_out_to_kingdom_come.com]shorter name[/url].
Then only the inner words ("shorter name") will appear, as a clickable link. (I've turned that off for demo purposes, but you can see such a link in my signature below.)
To do this simply, highlight "shorter name" with your cursor, then click the URL button above the text-entry box. You will now have "[url]shorter name[/url]." Position your cursor between the first "url" and the "]" bracket, type an equal sign and paste in the link.
As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to do this for any URL that is longer than the width of the text-entry box. Of course, you can do it with shorter URLs, too, which looks cooler than leaving all your https and wwws hanging out there.
The only reasons to post naked URLs are: 1) You are posting something like a restaurant web site with an accompanying address and phone number, which makes it easier for folks to cut and paste all the info into their address book, or 2) you're too lazy to bother with brackets.
Note that you can go back and edit your posts to shorten the links by clicking the "Edit" button.
Unless you're too lazy to care that people look at your posts and think, "Scrolling Horizontally Is Tedious!"
This completely unofficial answer to an unFAQ has been a public-service announcement from Your Encouraging Neatness Training Advocate. No URLs were harmed in the making of this announcement.
Last edited by LAZ on Thu May 22, 2008 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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