However, this causes some problems when trying to copy/paste a tweet. See the screenshot of this tweet.

If you try to copy/paste that Tweet you’ll end up getting an unusable URL. Perhaps Twitter should throw the 140 character limit out of the window on the tweet permalinks to make the full URL visible. This would make it easier to copy/paste but also simple to see whether or not the URL you are clicking on will lead to a Web page, a PDF file, an MP3 file, etc.

Fellow Viddler and friend Kyle Slattery is reworking his tag search pages. He’s created a really nice way to filter through the various types of content on his site based on tag search results. For instance, going to a tag search for my name will result in a few photos and a few links that he tagged with my name. You can then filter those results to only show you the photos or only the links.

But what if you hack the URL and search for a tag that shows no results? At current Kyle shows an error page. However, there was no error. His Web site should never link you to a page that doesn’t return any results (though it does right now). So how did the person end up here? They may have done a search, they may have hacked the URL, or someone else linked them to this page. Which ever way they ended up on that URL – there is still no reason to show an error.

This brings me to why I call these types of URLs “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for URLs”. These are URLs where you know what the person is looking for (droids) you just don’t have any. In the example URL I use above, a tag search for my name filtered by entries, Kyle does a good job of stating that there are no entries tagged with my name. This is much better than showing an error. In the other example, of a tag search that ultimately returns no results, he should do something very similar. This isn’t an error. There is just no content on his site that is tagged with ‘asdf’.

One of the suggestions I gave to him was to do a search through his own tags and try to see if, perhaps, they’ve mistyped the tag. I’m not sure what ‘asdf’ could have been, maybe sad? Or, what if someone spells my name with two Ls? This isn’t easy to program against – but there is an easier option that he could set up. Offer a search box with the tag that they entered already filled in and show a message of “Sorry, but I have nothing tagged with ‘asdf’. Maybe you misspelled what you’re looking for?”

My site isn’t a good example of best practices here. It used to be. But I had to hack WordPress to bits to get it to work last time and I’ve since upgraded WordPress too many times for those old hacks to work. However, if you’re looking for good examples – I’m sure Kyle’s site will end up being a pretty good example soon enough.

Have you seen any really good examples of this?

FriendFeed, of which I’m a member, recently launched an iPhone-friendly version of their site.  Notably, however, they’ve done it in such a way that I much prefer to some of the ways other sites have done it.  They detect the iPhone’s mobile browser and automatically format it for you, rather than requiring you to remember the URL of the iPhone-friendly site.

Flickr, on the other hand, has a mobile Website that – while it works fairly well on the iPhone (though it isn’t built for it) – is not interchangeable with the normal Website.  What I mean to say is, if someone links me to a Flickr photo on my iPhone either via Twitter, FriendFeed, or even through an SMS message – I’m forced to be taken to the full-fledged, slow-loading Website without so much as the choice of loading the mobile version.  At least with Twitter I’m able to simply prepend the URL with m.*, which switches the site into “mobile mode”, and see the same content.  Flickr’s URLs for their mobile site aren’t hackable.

FriendFeed does have hackable URLs ((Just insert /iphone/ into any URL.)). Combine the hackability of their URLs with the detection of the iPhone and you’ve got nearly a perfect solution for iPhone users.

Side note: I love the FriendFeed looks nearly the same on my iPhone as it does on my personal computer.  FriendFeed’s design lends itself to this because of its simplicity, lightness, and straight-forward “the content is the design” approach.

Source: FriendFeed iPhone interface.
Via: TechCrunch: FriendFeed Finally Gets iPhone Friendly ((I don’t like the use of the word finally in this title.)).