Automatic trimming of URL text in long auto-linked URLs
Title
Automatic trimming of URL text in long auto-linked URLs
Short, concise description of the idea
Extend the LiveJournal feature that automatically turns URLs into links, to make it automatically replace the link text of long URLs
Full description of the idea
Time and time again, I find myself having to either filter my Friends page or scroll back and forth across three times the width of my screen to read it, because some ... thoughtless individual, to be diplomatic ... has pasted a four-hundred-character URL directly into a post or comment without bothering to link it to descriptive text.
LiveJournal already automatically turns these raw URLs into links, but uses the URL itself as the link text. It would surely only be the work of minutes to extend this feature to replace the link text - either always, or on URLs longer than, say, 40 or 50 characters - with something like "Link to [the fully qualified hostname from the URL]". For example, a huge Google Maps URL would appear as "Link to maps.google.com.au" - or, perhaps, as "Link to http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=..."
An ordered list of benefits
- We would all be protected from the side-effects of the thoughtless laziness of people who can't be bothered to use