Your link does not work
If you are horsing around on mailing lists for a while, you will inevitably run into the “broken link syndrome”.
In the good old days of static HTML pages, a path to a webpage usually consisted of manually created files and folders. The person naming them usually picked names that made sense. So, for the “About” page, a URL could be http://www.mypage.com/content/about.htm or a link to an image could be http://www.mypage.com/images/mypic.jpg. Larger websites had deeper paths, but still, they generally made sense, for example http://www.mycompany.com/content/reports/2007/financial.htm.
The above links here are “cold” intentionally because I made them up.
Today, most websites and blogs are database driven, and that means that many files and folders are generated by the content management or shopping system or whatever else drives the website. Sometimes they are customizable, for example here in Wordpress but often they are not or no one has done it. Clicking on even a simple link passes data to the website and is often added to the link. This could be a search string (e.g. for Google), a session ID (e.g. for message boards), special instructions how the page is supposed to be displayed (character set, encoding, language, location or even layout) or commands that are passed (e.g. submit, post). Here is an example - searching for hdmi on Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=hdmi&x=0&y=0
If you think that is bad, see what happens after I log into my account at Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/product/productlist.aspx?submit=ene&depa=0&order=bestmatch&description=hdmi&x=0&y=0&guid=7c7d7e6b0123632e8795e0015e9795b7
Now the URL also contains a randomly generated user ID and has grown to 144 characters (and my search string was only 4 characters long). Due to the additional information, the URL gets longer and longer - and that is where the problem starts. Most email programs force line breaks after 70 to 80 characters. The line break is usually not inserted in the middle of a word or other obviously connected items, but what if a “word” is longer than 70 or 80 characters? The Newegg URL is 106/144 characters long; many Google search result URLs are even longer because they contain all search terms. In this case the email program has to force a wrap somewhere, and unfortunately the line break cuts off essential parts of the URL. When you receive this email, it is still clickable, but you are missing essential parts and it cannot reach the destination anymore. You either end up with an unrelated page or get a “page not found” error.
There are several reasons for this issue:
- most mailing lists only accept emails in plain text, and not HTML or rich text. With HTML, this would not happen (RTF fails too) but it would open up a whole new can of worms
- the URL was not formatted properly for plain text emails - there are tricks to prevent long URLs from breaking in plain text emails
- using the “wrong” email program - of course this is relative, a program isn’t wrong because it can’t handle URLs, but from what I have heard Eudora is smart and able to identify a URL thus not breaking it and apparently some Mac email clients also handle URL smart
- something out of your control breaks it, the email program of the recipient, the operating system can play a role, or what email system processes your message on its way to the list
So, now how do I prevent the links from breaking? There are a few different ways, not all work all the time.
- Add <pointy brackets> around the URL, which is easy, quick and shows the recipients where you want them to go but it doesn’t always work.
- Use TinyURL, but that can backfire because many people don’t trust TinyURL since you cannot see where you are going and you can have a nasty surprise waiting behind it. TinyURL is aware of that issue and has added a preview feature. The preview feature brings you to an interim page that will show you the full URL and you can decide whether you want to go there or not. Also, most people will actually tell you what they are linking and you have to decide if you trust them or not.
And what if you are on the receiving end? Well, you have to put the URL back together. I don’t think it is that hard. Usually, I click on Forward and just delete the extra line break in the URL. Sometimes you also have to delete the forward/reply markers like °, >, or SA> . usually you can see how the whole URL magically turns blue again and once all the URL garbage has been concatenated you can click it.
BTW, the reason why I use Forward and not Reply is so I don’t accidentally send it back to the list. Forward will leave the recipient field empty and prevents you from sending it.