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  15    <title>General: Insisting on breaking links</title>
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  59                         <h3 class="entry-header">Insisting on breaking links</h3>
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  62                               <p>The reluctance to use HTML in email (and news groups for that matter) is astonishing! Instead people insist on using plain text and inevitably paste long links that break due to stupid clients badly wrapping the URL. For example:</p>
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  65 http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j^M
  66 sp?casenum=G03519757
  67 </div>
  68
  69 <blockquote><b>Note:</b> "^M" included to indicate where the line wrap occurs as this blog software will wrap it differently</blockquote>
  70 <p>Email clients then linkify the first part (http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j) but fail to include the second part (sp?casenum=G03519757) resulting in the link not working and making the recipient have to do the work of piecing the URL back together. And with some humongous URLs (and you've seen them) this can be quite an effort. Move this to your small cell phone in a bumping bus ride and this is next to impossible!</p>
  71
  72 <p> So this has spawned an entire industry most notably tinyurl.com and friends. But why? Why not instead simple think up a meaning few words to describe the link and make a proper anchor href. For example, the above is talking about a Clarity case number of G03519757. So that should be the link text. Viola you have <a href="http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.jsp?casenum=G03519757">G03519757</a>. This magic is achieved in Thunderbird - my mailer of choice - simply by highlighting the link text, typing Ctrl-L for link and pasting in the proper URL (In Outlock you select <b>Insert: Hyperlink</b>). There! You're done. Was that <b>that</b> hard? You've not only made it much easier on the receiver of your email by providing a simple - and attractive - link that will not break by being wrapped by any email client capable of rendering HTML (i.e. most of them) and for any incapable, they'll see the link in all its ugly glory and improper and broken wrapping they they must be accustomed to by now anyway!</p>
  73
  74 <p>So why don't people do this regularly? I'm not sure but my guesses run neck and neck between lazy and ignorant. What's your guess?</p>
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  81                            <span class="post-footers">Posted by
  82                            Andrew DeFaria on
  83                            February 24, 2010 01:59 PM</span> <span
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 220                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000745.html">Point people more directly</a></li>
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 222                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000744.html">Comcast speed</a></li>
 223                                                          <li class="module-list-item"><a
 224                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000739.html">More Playon Fun</a></li>
 225                                                          <li class="module-list-item"><a
 226                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000736.html">How not to run a company</a></li>
 227                                                          <li class="module-list-item"><a
 228                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000734.html">How to get your mic working on Ubuntu 9.10</a></li>
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 230                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000729.html">Cell phones - Not up to snuff!</a></li>
 231                                                          <li class="module-list-item"><a
 232                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000728.html">Stupid is as stupid does</a></li>
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 234                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000723.html">Priority Queues...</a></li>
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 236                               href="http://defaria.com/blogs/General/archives/000722.html">Broken DNS</a></li>
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