Developer Quick Tip: An URL that’s easier to share

Today, I thought I’d share a little known trick to shorten and simplify the URLs you share with others. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the vast majority of URLs to your site that look something like this:

https://www.clickcommerce.com/cc/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial?Container=com.webridge.entity.Entity%5BOID%5B74531D0B99B5E14E848802448409917B%5D%5D

LayoutInitial is a primary driver of most content pages, including personal pages, and project workspaces. The way it knows which project workspace, personal page, or content page to display is by looking at the value passed via the Container query string parameter. While the computer has no problem reading this value, it’s not so easy for us humans to share this with each other. But, wait! There’s a better way…

2010 AALAS Conference

It’s hard to believe a year has gone by since my last visit to the annual AALAS conference but there’s no avoiding the truth as I’m now at 32,000 feet on my way to Atlanta for this year’s edition of the show. Last year was my first time and it was interesting to see the wide variety of exhibitors showing their wares big and small. On the large end, I saw massive automated feeding and cleaning systems and on the small end I was amazed at the grain-of-rice size RFID chips designed to be injected under the skin of individual mice.