Links

foo · Post by **foo** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 3:35 pm

(Since every member has to post, and this has me wondering, I figure I might as well use my token post to ask this)

Is there any particular reason external links have bits missing from the protocol specifier (most usually the h from http)? Nothing relevant pops up in the FAQ link (which seems to be the generic phpBB FAQ) or in a search for "links".

Ta,

Confused of Viaemail

ehy · Post by **ehy** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 6:26 pm

Heh. This gets asked every so often.

When your browser follows a link, the site at the destination can tell where you came from. A few sites make this information available, and there's one site from which this led to an influx of people to this board making derogatory comments. So someone had the clever idea of mangling links to that site so people couldn't just follow a link there, but had to actually cut-and-paste it into their browser.

For some reason some people have decided to do this with *every* link they post, even to places like Yahoo that are so big they couldn't care less that some miniscule fraction of their visitors are referred there from a bulletin board devoted to an obscure sexual fetish.

In my opinion, this is silly.

foo · Post by **foo** » Tue Dec 27, 2005 9:40 pm

All I need now is a Firefox extension to rewrite URLs to include the missing h

xerxes3141S · Post by **xerxes3141S** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 3:18 pm

A Firefox script would be cool, but what would be better would be something that would give the originating link as something inane, like Yahoo, or even better, a site that doesn't exist. I don't know if that could be done, but it's a nice thought.

Also, I've noticed this with firefox, but if you open the link (without the h) in a new tab. Firefox will reject it as an unfindable or unusuable link, but will keep the URL in the address box, so you just add the h and hit enter, and viola, no cutting and pasting.

xerxes

Cornelius · Post by **Cornelius** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 12:05 am

xerxes wrote:Also, I've noticed this with firefox, but if you open the link (without the h) in a new tab. Firefox will reject it as an unfindable or unusuable link, but will keep the URL in the address box, so you just add the h and hit enter, and viola, no cutting and pasting.

Every browser does this. Opening the tab happens before the actual request is made to the remote server. The server is just responding that it doesn't know how to handle a "ttp" protocol request.

foo · Post by **foo** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 6:44 pm

No, the browser is responding saying that it doesn't know what to do with the link. The browser does all the logic relating to which protocol to use, the server software never even sees the letters "http" from the client in the request itself. AFAIK, navigating from a blank tab to the then-typed URL doesn't pass on a Referer: (sic) header. There is probably a privacy extension around that will kill that even when navigating from innocuous sites.

ShinDangaioh · Post by **ShinDangaioh** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 10:00 am

There is the little box at the bottom of the posting screen that can be checked that disables HTML. They could use that as well, an all you have to do is copy the link and put into the browser tab

foo · Post by **foo** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:13 pm

If I wanted to navigate links manually, I'd install Lynx

Seriously folks, if you're concerned about it, right-click on a link and you get this little button popping up saying "Copy Link Location". I'd hate to have to write a browser extension for it myself and face questions about which necessity mothered that particular invention. Browsing the web with one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard is not comfortable. Remember that most people use the mouse in their right hand, and on QWERTY keyboards the letter H is also generally typed with the right hand. All of this switching the right hand between keyboard and mouse gets uncomfortable, and makes it difficult to sit back and appreciate the gynoidy goodness.