View source for rel-shortlink

<entry-title>rel="shortlink"</entry-title>
__TOC__
== Specification 2009-05-04 ==

=== Editors ===
* [http://samj.net/ Sam Johnston] ([http://www.aos.net.au/ Australian Online Solutions])

=== Concept ===
* [http://samj.net/ Sam Johnston] ([http://www.aos.net.au/ Australian Online Solutions])
* [http://shiflett.org/ Chris Shiflett] ([http://omniti.com/ OmniTI])
* [http://laughingmeme.org/ Kellan Elliott-McCrae] ([http://flickr.com Flickr])
* [http://twitter.com/robspychala Robert Spychala] ([http://snaplog.com/ Snaplog])

=== Copyright ===
{{MicroFormatPublicDomainContributionStatement}}

=== Patents ===
{{MicroFormatPatentStatement}}

== Abstract ==
<p class="entry-summary">RelShortLink is an [[elemental-microformat|elemental microformat]], one of several [[microformats|microformat]] open standards. By adding <code>rel="shortlink"</code> to a [hyper]link, a page indicates that the hyperlink may be used for space constrained and/or manual entry (e.g. printed or spoken) applications and that the destination of that hyperlink carries the same meaning (even if formatting such as sort order and hightlighting is lost). Typical use cases include pasting links into microblogging services such as Twitter and anywhere manual entry is required (e.g. printed or spoken URLs).</p>

== XMDP profile ==
<pre><nowiki>
<dl class="profile">
 <dt id="rel">rel</dt>
 <dd><p>
   <a rel="help" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#adef-rel">
     HTML4 definition of the 'rel' attribute.</a>  
   Here is an additional value.</p>
  <dl>
   <dt id="shortlink">shortlink</dt>
   <dd>Indicates that the referred resource carries the same meaning as the
       referring page (even if formatting such as sort order and highlighting
       is lost) and that the link may be used for space constrained and/or
       manual entry (e.g. printed or spoken) applications.</dd>
  </dl>
 </dd>
</dl>
</nowiki></pre>

== examples in the wild ==
This section is informative.
Note: There are numerous uses of rel-shortlink in the wild, this is very much an incomplete list. If your site marked up with rel-shortlink, feel free to add it to the top of this list. Once the list grows too big, we'll make a separate wiki page ([[rel-shortlink-examples-in-wild]]).
* [http://rel-shortlink.appspot.com RelShortLink] is an open source Python implementation hosted on [http://appengine.google.com Google App Engine] which scans both HTTP headers and HTML links for <code>rel=shortlink</code>.
* [http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/shortlink/ Wordpress 'shortlink' plugin] embeds <code>rel=shortlink</code> links into Wordpress blogs.

== normative references ==
* [http://gmpg.org/xmdp/ XMDP]
* [http://samj.net/2009/04/introducing-relshort-better-alternative.html Introducing rel="shortlink" - a better alternative to URL shorteners]
* [http://samj.net/2009/04/relshortlink-url-shortening-that-really.html rel=shortlink: url shortening that really doesn't hurt the Internet]
* [http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/apps-discuss/current/msg00531.html rel="shortlink" proposal for advertising short URLs in HTML/HTTP] thread on IETF apps-discuss

== informative references ==
* [http://code.google.com/p/shortlink/ Google Code 'shortlink' project]

== inferior alternatives ==
* [http://revcanonical.appspot.com/ RevCanonical]
** <code>rev=</code> deprecated in HTML 5
** <code>rev=</code> is easily confused with <code>rel=</code>, thus creating extreme danger for clueless webmasters
** implies that referring URL is the canonical URL, thus should only be used for the canonical URL itself
** implies that a complete list of referring URLs is offered, when in fact there are infinite possibilities
** See also mnot's [http://www.mnot.net/blog/2009/04/14/rev_canonical_bad Counting the ways that rev="canonical" hurts the Web]
* RelShortcut
** Scorched earth thanks to "shortcut icon" (now just "icon" in HTML 5) - rel is a space separated list for HTML at least
* RelShort[er]
** Ambiguous as to whether it refers to the URL or the content itself (e.g. abstract).
* RelShorturl
** Too many possible permutations: short[_- ]?ur[il] -> shorturl, short_url, short-url, "short url", short_uri, short-uri, "short uri", etc. leads to implementations supporting multiple variations.