Short URLs

[pfefferle]

What do you think about using rel-shortlink for twitter-syndication?

[snarfed]

interesting! i'm open to it, but rel-syndication is already pretty standard for that. would that work? do you have a specific use case in mind?

[pfefferle]

No, the other way round... posting article/notes via webmention/bridgy to twitter or facebook. Would it help to use a short url to save some characters?

[snarfed]

ahhhh got it. good idea!

twitter converts all urls in tweets to t.co links, which all have the same number of characters, and facebook doesn't limit characters, so it doesn't matter for that.

some people might still prefer to use their short urls, though...? not sure.

[snarfed]

btw @pfefferle, if you're interested in contributing, this could be a great place to start! should be a straightforward addition to publish.py.

[pfefferle]

OK, I will have a look...

[snarfed]

sounds like @singpolyma would like this too (#422).

@singpolyma, out of curiosity, what's your use case for short urls? i'm always curious since twitter now t.co-wraps all links, so their length no longer matters, and no other supported silos limit chars.

btw, you can currently get bridgy to use a short link when publishing if you put the short link into the interactive UI instead of the full link, or use it as the source param if you're webmentioning. https://www.brid.gy/about#short-link

[singpolyma]

It's about visual noise. If I post "it sure is hot outside" then a Facebook post like:

it sure is hot outside

(Original Link: https://singpolyma.net/2015/06/it-sure-is-hot-outside)

Just looks excessive...

Also, on twitter, I use algorithmic shorturls that I would prefer be displayed rather than t.co links (though of course it will be wrapped in t.co underneath in official clients)

[dissolve]

I think this is a good idea, it may not be too easy to send the shortlink in the webmention in your system.

[snarfed]

note to myself: i think we can find the shortlink(s) in a page with just:

soup.find_all('link', rel='shortlink') +
  soup.find_all('a', rel='shortlink') +
  soup.find_all('a', class='shortlink')

[snarfed]

quick survey! rel-shortlink, which @pfefferle mentioned, is evidently the standard (or close enough).

looking at recent posts from the three people who requested this:

@pfefferle has:

• <link rel="shortlink"> in head
• <input class="shortlink" value="[URL]"> in body

@singpolyma has:

• <link rel="shorter short_url"> in head

@dissolve has:

• <a rel="shortlink" class="shortlink u-shortlink"> in body

looks like shortlink is the winner. sorry @singpolyma! you'll want to update your markup if you still want to use this feature.

[kylewm]

class="shortlink" is hAtom/mf1, and we should probably add it to backcompat parsing of mf2py instead of to Bridgy.

[snarfed]

evidently the way to get a feature into bridgy is to have three different people ask for it. :P