Suggestion: URLs clickable
Author
Suggestion: Make the URLs clickable. After all, they are URLs, and people want to click on them. It'll make us more productive while using the site.
If the concern is PageRank spam, it is possible to make them invisible to Google's bots...
Thanks,
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 22, 2008 4:05:23 PM]
URLs were at one point clickable. Unfortunately, at the time, the performance of the URL regexs brought the server to its knees. We've had some hardware refreshes since then, but I don't think it's likely that they're going to come back. (Disclaimer: I'm not on the site development team.)
Author
Wow. I had no idea. It's too bad, though, since it's a real drain on productivity when people are linking to their work, or other references, etc.
I should note the site currently takes -- literally -- 15 seconds or more to load at the moment. My high-speed connection is not the problem (unless the route it takes happens to be very poor every time).
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 21, 2008 8:25:02 AM]
I should note the site currently takes -- literally -- 15 seconds or more to load at the moment. My high-speed connection is not the problem (unless the route it takes happens to be very poor every time).
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 21, 2008 8:25:02 AM]
Quote:Original post by Jason Doucette
I should note the site currently takes -- literally -- 15 seconds or more to load at the moment. My high-speed connection is not the problem (unless the route it takes happens to be very poor every time).
Ya, i think that's the same for everyone. It always seems to hang waiting for the ad server(s) and for submitting posts. I think you can probably get better site performance on the former by blocking the ad servers locally on your web client (haven't tried that, hence "probably")
-me
I run firefox with the linkification plugin. It takes care of making all hyperlinks clickable for me.
You could try that.
And people could just learn that most forums have either BB code or HTML code.
Here on gamedev it is easy enough to just < a href = ...
You could try that.
And people could just learn that most forums have either BB code or HTML code.
Here on gamedev it is easy enough to just < a href = ...
Author
Quote:Original post by SiCrane
Well, I use Firefox with the plain text links extension so it's not a big deal to me.
I'll check out the extension, thanks.
Unfortunately, not everyone uses this, or even knows about it...
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 21, 2008 8:57:23 AM]
Quote:Original post by Jason Doucette
Wow. I had no idea. It's too bad, though, since it's a real drain on productivity when people are linking to their work, or other references, etc.
How devastating.
(Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)
Author
This is precisely why this will never be fixed... because it's not regarded as a problem. A simple installation of an add-on fixes it for yourself, so you'll never see it again. The thought that an A HREF or BB code could be used suffices to show there is no problem, since the board can make links, if you so desire. Case closed.
However, consider the busy guy reading a thread in which 30 links are included to reference material, and he's having to copy and paste them into his browser, because the poster is busy and doesn't have time to preview posts or type A HREF for each link. (I'm now anticipating a comment regarding how the use of copy/paste won't kill me. :P)
Hey... all I'm doing is suggesting a slight tweak to the system that would improve the board, just a little bit, for everyone using it. :)
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 21, 2008 8:38:37 AM]
However, consider the busy guy reading a thread in which 30 links are included to reference material, and he's having to copy and paste them into his browser, because the poster is busy and doesn't have time to preview posts or type A HREF for each link. (I'm now anticipating a comment regarding how the use of copy/paste won't kill me. :P)
Hey... all I'm doing is suggesting a slight tweak to the system that would improve the board, just a little bit, for everyone using it. :)
[Edited by - Jason Doucette on March 21, 2008 8:38:37 AM]
It's an inconvenience. It's a legitimate inconvenience. It is not worth it to fix in this current forum version, unless it is incredibly trivial to implement. Given the performance problems we already have with our ad server and the perceived load time for pages, you want us to take a little longer and parse for URLs? Only URLs beginning with the "http://" protocol specification, or should be recognize "www.mysite.org", too? How about country TLDs? New TLDs like .info and .name and .shop? irc://irc.afternet.org/gamedev? (Many IRC clients install handlers so that loading such URLs in a browser opens the client, connects to the server and joins the channel.)
Once you scratch the surface, it's not nearly as simple an issue as it initially may appear - not when done right.
Once you scratch the surface, it's not nearly as simple an issue as it initially may appear - not when done right.
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