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Double PSA (I guess)
Oct. 9th, 2024 05:25 pmSo, bare URLs are potentially an accessibility issue. And I said that on reddit to somebody with this gargantuan link, like four lines long, and he replied that "back in the day" people had to post bare URLs "for safety".
Now, I don't know what day that was when most browsers didn't let you hover over link text to see where the URL leads, but you should absolutely be in the habit of doing that today because it's still pretty easy to spoof links in this way. Observe:
https://www.dreamwidth.org
If that link actually goes to Dreamwidth then I'll delete this post and you'll all win an imaginary gold star and so will that person, who also tried to tell me that viewing the destination of a link without clicking is not an option on all smartphones. A simple search suggests that, in fact, this is a standard feature of browsers, including mobile browsers, and I certainly hope so. If anybody out there is still relying on "oh, it's a bare URL" for safety then they are putting themselves at risk.
But I don't know, information doesn't spread out evenly, so maybe this will be helpful to somebody else.
Now, I don't know what day that was when most browsers didn't let you hover over link text to see where the URL leads, but you should absolutely be in the habit of doing that today because it's still pretty easy to spoof links in this way. Observe:
https://www.dreamwidth.org
If that link actually goes to Dreamwidth then I'll delete this post and you'll all win an imaginary gold star and so will that person, who also tried to tell me that viewing the destination of a link without clicking is not an option on all smartphones. A simple search suggests that, in fact, this is a standard feature of browsers, including mobile browsers, and I certainly hope so. If anybody out there is still relying on "oh, it's a bare URL" for safety then they are putting themselves at risk.
But I don't know, information doesn't spread out evenly, so maybe this will be helpful to somebody else.
