!HOWTO: Generate URLs

August 22nd, 2005 in Rants. Weblog

Microsoft has a great example of how not to generate s:

ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.MSDNQTR.v80.en/MS.MSDN.v80/ MS.VisualStudio.v80.en/dv_vccrt/html/ b1501fa6-27c2-478c-9e93-cc4fd802a01f.htm

Now that bit of tripe (from Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005) is a wonderful example of Why Programmers Are Retarded ™, if left to their own means. There are a few things we can pull from the example:

  • The URL is for ms-help, using a custom target. It’s a bit presumptuous, but hey — they’re Microsoft.
  • It refers to something for Visual Studio 8. I’d guess this as it’s repeated 4 times in the URL. In case they forgot, you know.
  • It’s an english page.
  • It’s a page about the C-Runtime Library. Had to guess that one from the obvious dv_vccrt clip.
  • It’s an page. Also repeated a few times. Note the 3-character extension in the second usage: obviously they’re serving the pages from an old box.
  • It’s a unique page. The tipped me off.

So, how could a URL like this look? How about:

http://help.microsoft.com/vs8/english/visual_c/crt/functions/exit

But that would be readable …