ExpandMyURL.com has created a javascript bookmarklet that allows you preview short urls in whatever page you happen to be browsing. To use this service simply drag our bookmarket to your bookmarks toolbar. Expand My Url (drag to your bookmarks toolbar)
Step 1: Drag the Bookmarklet to Your Bookmarks Toolbar
Step 2: In any page you are browsing click on our bookmarklet and as if by magic any short urls in the page will be made safe to visit
Step 3: If the page you are browsing is like Twitter.com and reveals more content after you have made your links safe
simply click again and any new
links will also be made safe
It really is that simple! You can tell that a short url is safe because it will go green, this means that this short link will now be ok to click on because it will go via expandmyurl.com first to verify that the destination URL is somewhere you want to visit.
You can test out our bookmarklet using our test links on our short link previewer test page. If you don't like it, just right click on it and select delete, and as if by magic it will vanish and never bother you again
Good question, we do this for two reasons. Firstly, short links have become popular because of services like twitter and because they take up less space. We wanted to conserve this idea of less clutter and concise information. However we wanted to do it in a way that was safe for the end user, so this is the best of both worlds, the space saving of short urls but the safety of knowing where your link ends up that long urls provide.
Secondly, services that expand the url automatically in the page, have to visit every one of those links. This is time consuming and if there are a lot of short links in the page this could cause the page to load more slowly, so we prefer to only check the links that you want to click on, speeding up the process for everyone.
How can I tell if a short link is safe to click on?If the link has gone green, then that is expandmyurl's way of indicating that this link has now been made safe and is ok to click on. When you click on this link, you will be first sent to expandmyurl.com and shown where the link redirects to so you can decide for yourself if you want to go there or not.
Can I make those Green Links Go Anway?You certainly can, to return your page to normal all you have to do is refresh the page, however bear in mind that any short links within this page will no longer be previewed by expandmyurl.com and are to be clicked on at your own risk. We take no responsibility for any lunch lost due to accidental redirects to tubgirl!
Does the ExpandMyURL.com bookmarklet work with all short links?No, unfortunately there are so many different shortening services that it is hard to keep track of them all, however we do preview the short urls from over 50 different shortening services, covering over 99% of all short urls in existance. However if we don't use a shortening service that you like, then drop us an email at our partner website gonetomorrow.co.uk and we'll see about getting it included for you.
is there going to be a Firefox extension version of the Safe Short Link Previewer?There certainly is and is the next thing on our very long to do list, the reason we created the bookmarklet first is that not everyone uses firefox and we wanted to get something up and running that everyone could use first. But watch this space, the firefox extension will be coming soon!