trying to find an old askme about browser portal thingy

July 6, 2008 2:00 PM

Coulda swore there was an AskMe about a site that would allow you to punch in a URL and see what the site looks likes on different browsers/platforms... but of course I can't find it. Anyone recall this or am I imagining it?
posted by dobbs to MetaFilter-related at 2:00 PM (29 comments total)

Don't know about the AskMe, but were you looking for browsershot.org?
posted by dg at 2:10 PM on July 6

I don't know about the Askme, but this might help My Digital Life
posted by Blacksun at 2:10 PM on July 6

Hmm. Weird. Thanks dg and Blacksun.
posted by dobbs at 2:33 PM on July 6

Hmm. Weird indeed. If dg is still in Australia, we are about as far apart as it's possible for two human beings to be - I am in the UK. I'm rather tickled by that. Glad to help.
posted by Blacksun at 2:48 PM on July 6

Speaking of different browsers, metafilter does not like Opera 9.5.
posted by 517 at 2:52 PM on July 6

Huh, neat. But the question remains - great minds think alike or fools never differ?
posted by dg at 2:53 PM on July 6

I'm with you fellas.
posted by Jofus at 2:58 PM on July 6

Great fools think different.
posted by cortex at 3:15 PM on July 6

Just as a cranky aside, I really hate tinyurl stuff. It obscures the URL that shows in the status bar of your browser when you mousehover, which means that I never ever follow tinyurl'd links. My loss, but it just seems somehow suspicious to me that people would ever use a service like that to deliberately obscure where they are sending people, so I assume maliciousness, goatse, rickrolling or some other fuckery, even here. I cannot see the utility of the thing, other than as a redirection service so someone doesn't know you're linking to them. Which seems pretty marginal, utility-wise.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:37 PM on July 6

I cannot see the utility of the thing

IRC, mostly. And email. Places where the link isn't going to be obscured, so you can turn a 600-character blort of crap into something that's easy to cut and paste or at least easy on the eyes.
posted by mendel at 3:55 PM on July 6

I agree with every kvetch you have stated, stav, and actually replace tinys with plain expanded links sometimes if I see them.

That said, you can make your experience less annoying by visiting the tinyurl site and turning on a (cookie-based) interstitial mode that will show you the expanded link and let you decided whether to follow or not.

Helps with the griefing. Doesn't do much for rickrolls, of course, since who fucking knows what's on the other end of a youtube video url, but hey.
posted by cortex at 3:56 PM on July 6

For example: blammo, Blacksun.
posted by cortex at 3:57 PM on July 6

great minds think alike or fools never differ?

Definitely the former.

Just as a cranky aside...

No deliberate obfuscation intended. Purely functional - I just find it easier to edit the link with an actual name when it isn't right off the edge of the box with a long URL. If that makes sense - I know what I mean! Just getting the hang of HTML and stuff, so it's pure utility. Will bear it in mind though.
posted by Blacksun at 4:00 PM on July 6

This is incredibly useful. Thanks dg & blacksun! And dobbs, of course.

Also: why isn't this on the front page yet?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:04 PM on July 6

Actually, I wouldn't see the point of deliberately obscuring something on here - I thought the whole point was to help. Maybe I not around this place enough to figure out why it'd be annoying. Anyway, if it's Askme etiquette, count me in.
posted by Blacksun at 4:05 PM on July 6

I think not tinyurling is just plain good etiquette whenever there's not a really compelling reason to do it. It's a space-saving device in some cases (IM, twitter, etc), and an obfuscation tool in others (dodging filters, rickrolling, hiding affiliate links), but none of that applies to the general case of sharing links with people, and doubly so for MeFi where there's basically no added utility and an actual reduction in usefulness in a shortened link.

All of which is aside from the possibility that Tinyurl HQ might get hit by a meteor tomorrow and render all of those links dead, etc.
posted by cortex at 4:18 PM on July 6

(That said, I hear what you mean, and I don't think anybody would have thought anything intentional in you doing it. It's just annoying for a lot of reasons, so SUCK IT UP, NANCY, etc.)
posted by cortex at 4:18 PM on July 6

Another one is BrowserCam
posted by twiggy at 4:21 PM on July 6

> Tinyurl HQ might get hit by a meteor tomorrow

TinyURL appears to expire stale addresses. A link posted here can die even if the target page is still live.
posted by ardgedee at 4:32 PM on July 6

I don't think anybody would have thought anything intentional in you doing it.

No, no. Just sayin'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:47 PM on July 6

It obscures the URL that shows in the status bar of your browser when you mousehover, which means that I never ever follow tinyurl'd links.

Tin Foil Hat: Don't click links without it.
posted by Partial Law at 6:03 PM on July 6

Yeah, I hate TinyURL too and almost never clink the links - I only clicked on this one because my curiosity, based on the comments after the two time-synced links, got the better of me.

Blacksun, if you can't see the point of obscuring links, you need to hang out on the Internets more. For some people, it's almost an art form.
posted by dg at 6:43 PM on July 6

Twitter converts links to TinyURLs whenever an url gets beyond a certain length, but does NOT "credit" the number of characters saved so you can include more text... so why do THEY do it?

And TinuURL just introduced a feature so you can give it a "custom alias", either to clarify what you're linking to (tinyurl.com/microsoft does go to the MS homepage), OR do even more malicious mischief (I'm not clicking tinyurl.com/goatse, nope). But the good short aliases are going fast, so of course, I had to hurry up and claim tinyurl.com/wendell. (OH NO! IT'S A PERSONAL BLOG!! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!)

And I lurve browsershots.org.
posted by wendell at 7:09 PM on July 6

I don't get this whole "lurve" thing. Do you people actually pronounce the word that way? Why?
posted by !Jim at 8:23 PM on July 6

There may be some non-rhotic roots there. It seems like every confusing thing involving an extra r that I've looked into lately has had something, in the end, to do with Brits.
posted by cortex at 8:25 PM on July 6

What do you have against the Brrrrrits?
posted by spiderwire at 8:53 PM on July 6

cortex: "Doesn't do much for rickrolls, of course, since who fucking knows what's on the other end of a youtube video url, but hey."

If you have Firefox with Adblock Plus, there's a Rickroll Database to prevent them.
posted by IndigoRain at 10:07 PM on July 6

I don't get this whole "lurve" thing. Do you people actually pronounce the word that way? Why?

Love is too weak a word for what I feel - I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F's, yes I have to invent, of course I - I do, don't you think I do?
posted by dobbs at 10:49 PM on July 6

This one:
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php
does all versions of IE.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:34 PM on July 7 [1 favorite]