Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with links

How do I successfully update my flash/actionscript file?

Bacillus — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:29:27 -0800

How do I successfully update links within an actionscript file for a Shockwave Flash file? so the default links don't always come up. I have tried updating it several times using many programs. A while back I downloaded a Flash file from istockphoto.com. The file is an Australian Flash Map.

Instructions say to basically change the default links within function.as (actionscript file) and it should work straight away.

I've used many programs to update the file including Notepad, Wordpad, NuSphere PHP editor & Adobe Flash CS3. Each time I attempted to try update the file on the server I cleared my cache using CCleaner.

I had this working about a year ago, but I can't remember how I did it :/

I've spent a couple hours on the Internet but no-one seems to be having the same problem except on one website with no replies or comments.

Help me find a new Pixelsurgeon-ish site!

aqueousdan — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:10:42 -0800

Looking for a site that aggregates sites to do with character design, typography, cute craft, flash interfaces, 3d goodness, crazy news and general cool stuff in the vein of the now defunct Pixelsurgeon. Oh how I miss Pixelsurgeon :( There were a few similar sites around at the time (around 2002 ish) that I really cannot remember but pixelsurgeon was by far the best of the lot. It pushed me to design my own stuff and I loved it for that. If such a thing doesnt exist anymore please feel free to post your own sites that fall into these categories... my current whim is cute stuff made from felt but I can feel a Zbrush modelling frenzy coming on or maybe some kind of 3d tank design :D

Jeez Google pt. 2 - We still want clean URLs

cashman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:11:33 -0800

Remove these crappy ultra-long links from my Google Search Results when I right-click! What's the best way to get rid of these ultra-long Google urls that pop-up when you right-click a link in Google search results? It's basically a rehash of this AskMe from 2008.

I don't use greasemonkey. I had customizegoogle installed but that was abandoned and no longer works - does optimizegoogle do this? I just want to get my right-click links back. I tried removing web history, logging in or out doesn't matter, and deleting cookies, etc - nothing seems to stop it, and I hate it.

Lil help?!

Have you noticed the link outline?

jakubsnm — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:56:29 -0800

Have you noticed the link outline? When you click on links, before the page loads a dotted border appears arond the link called the link outline. Would you prefer professional looking sites to not display this outline? Wish i could show an exampe of a site.

* I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer does not support the disabling of the outline. I know Firefox does

Thanks for the pageviews, no thanks for the spam.

tip120 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:26:21 -0800

I have been getting weird Wordpress referrer spam the last 4 days, but there are no injections or anything of the like on my site. I have a site running wordpress. No comments or users, I'm using it as a simple CMS.

I'm using the StatPress plugin to check out who is coming to the site. This morning, I noticed an abnormally large number of visitors the last few days.

People seem to be visiting pages like mysite.com/?myfjkfosljfsfjd (NB : not a string I've seen, just an example). When clicked, it will go to my homepage. Checking the source, there is nothing out of the ordinary (no spam links, etc). If you google that end string by itself, you get one result, to my site, with a summary that lists a whole bunch of viagra type words.

Any idea what is going on, and how I can stop this?

I was running 2.8.2, upgraded to 2.8.3 this morning.

You can get my details from my userpage if you want specifics.

Is there a Wordpress widget that will automatically sort the links in my sidebar by date?

jeremias — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:46:27 -0800

Is there a Wordpress widget that will automatically sort the links in my sidebar by date? If not, how would I code one? Basically, I'm looking to duplicate the Waxy Links sidebar in a Wordpress theme. I'm currently building a theme in Wordpress 2.8, and the Links widget does about 80% of what I want. (Yes, I have asked this on the Wordpress forum, but the question was competing with the other 8 million questions and have recieved no feedback.)

However, what I'd really like is the following workflow:

I add a new link with the links widget (or alternative) and publish.

The link shows up in the sidebar under a header with the date. Any additional links posted that day would also show up here.

For bonus points, it would be nice if there were some auto-cutoff, so after 25 posted links or so, the oldest links would disappear as the new ones were added

I'm reasonably code savvy, so no fear of php, css, etc. I'm just hoping there's a canned solution that's easy to implement.

Luddite Lawyer needs help!

bananafish — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:21:00 -0800

CD-ROM with hypertext links to other documents on CD-ROM? I'm a luddite lawyer who needs help. So the Judge's rules say that I can file my brief on a CD_ROM and include hypertext links to exhibits on the same CD-ROM. I would love to do this since I will have many, many exhibits. How can I do this?

Should links open in a new window?

Stephen Elliott — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:09:47 -0800

Is it better to have links open in a new window, or to open in the same window? Maybe this belongs in projects, but I'll ask here. When I launched my magazine site in January, I had links opening in a new window. But then, I noticed that the sites I liked the most, like Kottke and Metafilter, didn't do this. Instead of opening a new window they had links go straight to the page they were linking to. But recently some people have complained. They don't want to have to go back to the page, because you follow one link, and then another. They said they'd prefer if the original window remained and the link opened in a new window. So, I'm wondering if there's a reason metafilter and Kottke do this, and if people prefer one linking system or another?

How can I import a lot of links into Firefox?

ataxia — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:07:41 -0800

Is it possible to import large amounts of links into Firefox as bookmarks? I have over 2000 web links on my hard drive that I would like to add to my Firefox bookmarks - is there a way to import them all at once, rather than manually opening them and pressing ctrl + D?

It is possible to drag a group of selected links into the bookmarks manager, but it ignores the title of the link. I also already have the links sorted into folders, so it would be ideal if they could just all be dragged in and remain in their folders.

I'm using Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows XP if that makes any difference. Thanks!

Bonus question: Is there a downside (performance wise) to having a large amount of bookmarks in Firefox? I won't be keeping all of them, but I already have a lot as it is.

Help me see the original format of the blogs I subscribe to.

kgreerRN — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:19:02 -0800

Is there an RSS reader (or something along those lines) that will allow me to view the blog in its original format? I subscribe to Google Reader, which I love, however I miss not seeing the blog formats and colors and side links to other blogs and extras. The side links are my favorite! Like hidden treasures, but overall I would like a way to preserve the intended view of the blog while organizing them into one place! Too much to ask? Or do I need to go back to my handy dandy favorites list...that I can only view from my own computer?

How to properly delete a website.

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:04:03 -0800

I think I may have made a mess while deleting my website and need some advice! I had a website up for about 8 months and I decided that at current time, I want to focus on professional endeavors and once I get a bigger, better portfolio, relaunch a new website in a year or so. That being said, I deleted my old website and canceled my host. I was wondering what to do about the dead links that are now floating about on google. Will google eventually remove these? I tried the url removal tool, but google will not do anything, since my website link appears on a couple of third party websites. I'd really like to clean things up, as I do plan on relaunching again in the future. I also understand that the url removal tool is only temporary. So will these links eventually go away? Should I have done this differently? Any tips? Thanks!

Links don't work

KRS — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:52:07 -0800

Link icons -- Location not available -- Access is denied I'm running Vista Home Premium in non-Administrator mode, as the user US, and Word 2007.

Links (icons with an arrow inside) work fine from the desktop, but in the directory tree ("Computer"), when I click on a link icon (such as My Music), instead of following the link, I get an error message "Location is not available" -- "C:\Users\US\Documents\My Music is not accessible." -- "Access is denied."

This also happens when I navigate down the directory tree to My Music (which is also a link).

And it also in Word 2007 in the Open Document list.

Has the current directory tree become un-synchronized with the table in Windows Explorer? If so, how do I rebuild it?

Or do I need to grant the user US blanket permission to access links? If so, I can log in as the Administrator, but then what do I do?

How do I disable Mail on my mac?

bluefly — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:24:01 -0800

Is there a way to disable Mail.app on my mac (OS 10.4.11)? It pops up whenever I mistakenly click on a mailto link. I don't use it for my email, so it's really annoying. Googling suggests that you can go to the Preferences menu in Mail, but that's greyed out for me, as I've never ever used the program before. I use my departmental webmail. I'd like to eventually figure out how to redirect the mailto links to some other email software/account, but for now, just disabling it will be fine.

Wayback Machine Plugin for ALL old/dead outbound links on a website?

bollockovnikov — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:19:17 -0800

My old website still gets a lot of hits. But many of the outbound links I posted years back are no longer valid, are dead or have changed location. Is there any way to integrate the Wayback Machine Internet Archive into my site's code so that links are redirected to the archive for the date they were originally posted? Ideally I would like an integrated plugin that directed old outbound links to their archived page on Wayback automatically. It would be great if visitors to the site hardly even knew their click had been redirected. I would like to implement it site-wide, so that either:

1. All outbound links were directed to the original date they were posted, or
2. If links are dead then the plugin kicks in and directs to the wayback archive, or
3. The plugin places a Wayback version of each link next to the original (something like: Original Link [archive])

(My site is a self-hosted blogger blog - the old version - if that makes a difference...)

Is there a way?

Tips as to UNIX Shell Script to Programmatically Save a Webpage as a Text File

WCityMike — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:53:03 -0800

I'm writing a shell script to take a webpage and convert it into a text file. I'd appreciate tips as to how to store URLs, save the file with the URL's title as its name, and also just general tips as to how to improve the script and/or achieve the process better. Specific questions inside. I'd like to write a shell script which converts a webpage into a text file. After a lot of tinkering with various note-taking applications, Firefox extensions, and so on, I've found that the best tool for me is just plain good old-fashioned text files. However, I'd love it if I could automate the process a little bit more, and so I'm writing a shell script to get a webpage into a text-form equivalent.

Right now, I've got:

links -dump -width 512 "$1" | cut -c 4- > /tmp/temp.file lynx -listonly -dump "$1" | sed '1,3d' | cut -c 7- >> /tmp/temp.file edit -b /tmp/temp.file

In this example, $1 is a Web address.

What this does is:

Uses links to save the text of the page. I use this instead of lynx because the "-width 512" lets it handle it without inappropriate line breaks, and links seems to let handle punctuation spacing better than lynx. (The "cut" removes the extra lefthand margin.)
Uses lynx to generate the list of links that are on that page, removing the "References" header, margin, and numbering. Links doesn't seem to have any way of recording the URLs when generating a text copy. It appends that to the work in progress.
Sends this to TextWrangler to open up in the background.

I'm seeking the community's advice on this on three points:

The way I've got it working now is okay, but, ideally, I'd like to handle URLs in the way that Mefi's print stylesheet handles it — the URL appearing right after the link text. So in a webpage converted into a text file, instead of it being "Google", it'd be "Google [http://www.google.com]". I'm aware that lynx lets you do footnotes ("[1]Google" and later "1. http://www.google.com"), but lynx's handling of line breaks and spacing isn't great.
I'd then ideally like to have this script save the results automatically to a text file on my Desktop with the URL's TITLE attribute as the name of the file.
I'm wondering if, given the format, any odd punctuation in the URL could screw up the process.
Also, I imagine this might be an enjoyable script for others — and if so, any other modifications to the script that would improve the overall process and/or end goal — and/or any utilities that do this process better than what I'm hacking up — would be appreciated.

What are external links, and what value do they provide to my site ranking?

Nixie Pixel — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:07:40 -0800

What are external links, and what value do they provide to my site ranking? Are they important? What are external links, and what value do they provide to my site ranking? Are they important? I understand the basics of external linking, but I'd like to know a more in depth explanation. Thanks a lot in advance! =)

Internal links plugin for Wordpress

backwards guitar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:22:44 -0800

I'm looking for an internal links plugin for Wordpress. I'm using Wordpress as a CMS, and one of the editors wants an easy way to link to site pages from the TinyMCE editor. I'd assume this has already been done, but the only plugin I can find that looks like it might work (RB Internal Links), doesn't seem to work in 2.7. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

How I am picturing such a plugin working is the editor clicks the LINK icon in TinyMCE, and they have a dropdown of all the site's pages (showing the page hierarchy if possible).

G-Chat G-Litch?

RingerChopChop — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:59:14 -0800

A friend and I were Gchatting and accidentally stumbled upon a useless but cool linking glitch. Is it really a glitch? Check it out! Okay, so in Gchat, if you type any sequence of letters and then a period, and then one letter, and then another period, and then two more letters, Gchat automatically turns it into a link. For example:

abc.d.ef

Sometimes it links to real websites, sometimes it links to nowhere. We discovered this when I randomly messaged her something about "will.i.am" and it showed up as a link to a fan website. It doesn't work with numbers. What's going on here? Does anybody know? Is it a glitch or is it somehow useful to people smarter than ourselves?

Bookmark duplicates and dead links

schoenbc — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:21:18 -0800

How can I identify duplicate and expired bookmarks? Is there any application/software that allows you to (1) identify duplicate bookmarks you may have? I'd also like to be able to have access to a program that would run through my bookmarks and identify any dead links. Do such programs exist? More importantly, are there any free apps? I did a search of AskMeFi and couldn't find anything that answered my questions. Thanks.

Linking photos in Dreamweaver

fish tick — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:20:41 -0800

Dreamweaver DX help needed - simple but repetitive linking task. I have a large table into which I've dragged a few hundred thumbnails, and now need to link those to their larger counterparts all of which have the same name as their respective thumbnails but are in a separate folder. Can Dreamweaver automate this task? Can Dreamweaver rename all of the pictures numerically based on the order in which they now appear in the table to facilitate this task?
No RTFM responses, please - I've dug around a bit.

How do people on the Blue do it?

reenum — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:50:57 -0800

How do people find new and interesting links on the Web? Every day, I read Metafilter, Boing Boing, kottke, etc. These sites all have links that I see for the first time on these sites.

Now, I know kottke and Boing Boing have users sending them links. But, my question is: how do these normal people find these links? Are there special techniques or things I'm not doing that helps others find new and interesting stuff whilst I view the fruits of their labor?

I guess what I'm asking is how people search for subjects and find new and undiscovered information about those subjects?

It's never as good the second time.

JakeLL — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:41:31 -0800

I often lose text that I've written in a web page by accidentally hitting a link and page changes (instead of in a new tab). Is there anything I can do to always save the text on the previous page? When I hit the "Back" button, everything I've written is gone. Is there a plug-in or grease monkey script that can help with this problem? I'm even okay with a key logger if I have to.

Incoming Links Mystery

Holly — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:19:04 -0800

I have just discovered the world of incoming links tools like Marketleap which check incoming links to my site. There are several, and Marketleap confirms this for search engines like Yahoo, AlltheWeb, etc. But Marketleap and Seocentro.com - the two links tools I've checked - list zero incoming links from Google. Google Analytics is tracking the site; the site appears on a Google search; but a Google search for link:(mywebsite).com brings up a big fat "0" on Google. What could be the explanation for this?

Back to Black

juva — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:21:13 -0800

Why do some links become blue when I convert a Word document to PDF? They are black in the Word document. I'm converting a few documents to PDF. The documents have quite a few links which are all set to black in Word (they are also set to remain black after being clicked on).

When I convert these documents to PDF, some of the links (the ones that have been most recently changed) turn out blue.

Why is this happening and how can I stop it? I need all my links to be black.

I'm using Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard.

Thanks!

Website Promotion

cjorgensen — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:27:17 -0800

What is your one best ethical suggestion for promoting a blog/website? I've been googling the crap out of this for the last week or so, and have found a lot of, well, crap out there.

Not enough of it has been helpful. A lot of it seems shifty or stupid or likely to backfire.

I figure if people limit their answer to one suggestion, this would be helpful.

I'm banging away on social media type site, listing directories, search engines, etc. And traffic is going up, but obviously, I'd like to see even more. Ideas (idea!)?

Thanks.