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Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

Just because a thing is prevalent doesn't mean it's good. I have a hard time believing all those parameters are completely necessary for the amount of data being displayed. Often times it feels like people just base64encode(page.state) and call it a day.

I think it's advantageous to keep the complexity and specificity of information in URLs to a minimum outside of what's needed to retrieve the data set as it can make backwards compatibility easier - it is valuable (for long lasting tools) to have URLs that users can favorite and share for their common searches.

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> Just because a thing is prevalent doesn't mean it's good.

I agree with this sentiment. I'm not sure I've ever seen a url referred to as "good", I was just a bit confused as to why someone would baulk at a URL. In my opinion everything after the host portion of the url is to serve the apps needs, so it knows where to go or what to do, it's not really an interface for the user as obviously there are better ways to present that.

I’d say everything after the host is part of the UX, and should serve the user needs. For example:

* Should be book-markable.

* If searching with a query, should have a clear query parameter for ease of browser integration.

* If the URL contains slash dividers that can be read as categories (e.g. storefront.com/department/category/product), then deleting everything after a given slash should go to that category’s page.

* The link should be short enough to be sent over a plain-text conversation without becoming a wall of text.

* The link should be short enough that it cannot hide a malicious subdomain (e.g. Google.com.flights.malicio.us/more/elements).

* I should be able to guess if you're sending me a link about composting or a Rick Astley video

Opaque slugs are problematic in a low-trust world. Phishing attempts are easier when the parameters are indecipherable. I'm not clicking on that shit in a text message or an email. I've seen what happens to people when they do.

Eh, I mean URL shorteners are a thing and all kind of things redirect on the web. The length of the URL doesn't really tell you much.

URL shorteners are a menace. I'm not clicking on the link if you send me a shortened one, especially not when on mobile. These days, shortened links have two primary applications: forcing you to go through a tracking/analytics gate, and serving single-click exploits. Neither of those is serving the user (unless you read it in "To Serve Man" sense).

No - but they have been referred to as "cool" before. Gotta love the early 90's.

https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

The point of a URL is that I can copy+paste it into IRC so my friends can look at the thing I want to share with them.

If the URL has a bunch of goop in it, people are going to make fun of me for it, especially if it's super long and doesn't fit in a single line. Or if there's stuff in there that's specific to me and not the thing I want to show them.

Where I work, we consider URLs part of the UI. Users should be able to share links with each other without pasting a wall of text. We also try to make all URLs human parsable so that they know what they are sharing.

I can say that many, many times, I have zoomed in, picked date ranges, added options, then pasted the yahoo finance url to others... and they have all those same configs passed.

It's awesome and incredibly handy.

Yahoo is on the ball here.

Agreed. However they could still simplify the urls a ton by including only non-default parameters, and still achieve the same thing.

Everything in chart is customizable, so no, its not possible to achieve the same thing in the way you are saying

Yes, but anything that hasn't been customized doesn't need to be included in the URL, so most URLs will be much shorter by only including non-default values.

And what problem does this solve? Hint, it doesn't. Long URL is ugly but who cares. Life is too short. Nice or ugly is relative. It stops nobody from using the tool or sharing links. It's a non-problem really.

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