This article was published on October 28, 2008

Simple Ways to Make Short URL’s Long Again


Simple Ways to Make Short URL’s Long Again

Not sure about you but i’m sick of short URL’s…endlessly clicking through to find out what your twitter friend thought was “cool”. These are some great ways to save you the time and trouble of clicking through by allowing you to see the true address behind that ghastly tiny url.

1. Tiny URL’s built in preview feature.

TinyURL.com has a tasty little feature which places a cookie in your browser and lets you automatically redirect to a ‘preview page’ before revealing the actual page that the tinyurl redirects you too. Not much of a time saver it has to be said, but if you’re main issue with tiny url’s is security – this is a definite help.

2. Use Embiggen the bookmarklet to expand TinyURL’s.

Embiggen is a bookmarklet which lets you view the real url’s of all the nasty tiny urls on the page. Simply drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar and it will automatically change all TinyURL’s into the original URL. Unfortunately it only works for TinyURL and not the plethora of other services out there.

3. Use LongURL

LongURL is a much needed tool which lets your preview shortened URL’s from basically every short url service out there. It’s available as both a firefox extension or a greasemonkey script and allows you to hover over tiny URL’s from across the web and view their URL’s there and then.

4. Preview Thumbnails of Tiny URL’s

PrevURL tries to take things a step further by allowing you to preview the URL of the site before actually visiting it. In my opinion, it’s a pain in the backside – particularly as there isn’t a bookmarklet to go with this. However, if you’re security conscious then this may be ideal for you. Copy and paste the URL into the field available to you at prevrl.com and a second later you’re viewing the preview of the page you were about to visit.

My personal favorite without any doubt – LongURL

via FriedBeef

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