Forums Feature Suggestions Auto Shortening of long URLs

Commonly I have friends that post long links in a channel window, and sometimes the really long links are obnoxious. Of course you can go through tinyurl.com or makeashorterlink.com and generate a shorter URL, but that's a whole bunch of extra steps.

Since mIRC already can parse URLs, could there be a feature where the link is automatically shortened to a symbol (like, say, [link]) on your screen when someone posts a URL that's longer than a specified threshold length?

For example, if someone writes on channel:

"Hey! Check out http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3206626817&category=13727"

Someone using a client with this feature would see

"Hey! Check out [link]"

Clicking on [link] would launch a browser like normal. Right-clicking would grab the shortcut just like it was a whole URL.

Maybe instead of the word "link", the parser puts in the hostname of the URL

"Hey! Check out [ebay]"

What do you think?

Hmmm...you mean like "Hey, check out [free porn site that contains no virus]"???

I don't think this is a good idea either. There is already a problem with people clicking on random urls they don't know..

I guess you're right. I hang out on a channel where I know everyone and nobody is pasting random porn and javascript links. That's why I suggested 1) this be an option, not an automatic feature and 2) it show the hostname in the link

As an option? Guess what.. Most users would just enable it as soon as they'd notice it
Maybe some kind of tooltips (displaying full url) would help.. but i still don't think this would be a good feature.

I imagine that this would work from mIRC's /run command and in addition to the other posts here...

It won't be good because if this feature was implimented there's every possibility that one could hide hostile DOS commands or /remove commands inside the 'link' area.

EG: Hey, click [here] to delete your C Drive.

Indeed... I don't click on something unless I can see where I'm going.