Safari History and Twitter bitly links

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Level 1

8 points

Safari History and Twitter bitly links

I just noticed that Safari (5.1.3) in Lion is storing bitly links from Twitter (t.co/x/x) in the History as "No Title" with the bitly url. Has it always done this? Why doesn't it show the expanded url?

I just went and checked Chrome (17.x.x) and it expands the link in history. And while I'm there it shows the time of visit too. That would be nice to see in Safari.

Is this an issue for anyone else?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Safari 5.1.3

Posted on Feb 14, 2012 2:00 PM

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Answer 1

greggmorris Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2012 2:19 PM in response to greggmorris

My bad. I just rechecked Chrome and it has a number of the http://t.co/x/x links just as Safari does.

Clearly a problem involving the way Twitter is serving up the links. Would be helpful if all parties could get this working again as the way it is now is kinda' sorta' useless!

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Answer 2

Niel

Level 10

741,875 points

Feb 14, 2012 2:49 PM in response to greggmorris

This is a combination of how Safari handles redirect URLs(report it as a bug from the Safari menu if desired) and how Twitter works. This can be worked around by highlighting an URL, pressing the Command and C keys, and pasting that into a new browser tab, or using the command line through the Terminal or AppleScript Editor to run a curl -si command on the short URL. For example:

curl -si http://www.apple.com

do shell script "curl -si http://www.apple.com"

(64082)

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Answer 3

greggmorris Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2012 2:58 PM in response to Niel

Thank you Niel. I'll try the terminal/curl step.

Highlighting a url in a Twitter stream and pressing Command C and pasting it into a new tab still pastes http://t.co.x/x. Unfortunately...

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Answer 4

greggmorris Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2012 3:08 PM in response to greggmorris

Interestingly enough, right clicking the url and choosing Services, Open URL does work. Not for all urls but for most. Right clicking and choosing Open in New Tab, Open in New Window, or highlighting and doing Command C in a new tab or window do not pass the unshortened url to History.

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Answer 5

greggmorris Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2012 3:18 PM in response to Niel

Ah hah! I wasn't highlighting the url. I was simply hovering the mouse pointer, which highlighted it but not in the same way as highlighting by dragging the mouse pointer from start to finish or vice versa. Highlighting it in this way does indeed add it to History as the unshortened url.

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Answer 6

greggmorris Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 14, 2012 3:24 PM in response to Niel

Spoke, er, wrote too fast. That only works for urls that aren't shortened by a service before they're passed to Twitter. Twitter seems to handle all links as http://t.co/x/x. Links showing in the tweet stream as bitly.x.x or whatever are copied as http://t.co/x/x using Command C. Links showing as domain/x/x in the stream are copied into History properly.

This is just stupid!

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