Open Radar

 
07-Feb-2012 08:18 PM Pablo Ramos:
Summary:

URL shortening services provide a short URL that redirects to the final URL through 301 redirects. When such an URL is followed, Safari's browsing History will show the source URL. While this works as expected, it doesn't expose the necessary information to make History any useful when there is a significant amount of short URLs in the browser's History. This is quite common when following links from Twitter, where the t.co URL shortener is applied to ALL URLs.

Please consider a special case for these URL-shortening services where the final URL is listed in Safari's History.

Steps to Reproduce:

Open Safari
Navigate to https://t.co/oNOKvsE8
It will 301 redirect to https://bugreport.apple.com
Select History

Expected Results:
The final URL after all 301s have been followed should be listed in History. In this case, it should be "Apple Bug Reporter" with an URL of https://bugreport.apple.com

Actual Results:
https://t.co/oNOKvsE8 will appear in History, with no title or any indication of this being a link to Apple's Bug Reporter.

Regression:
Has been the case for recent versions.

Notes:
Consider the case where the user would actually like to keep a reference to the source short URL. Something to consider - do we show both source short URL and its destination? Is the source short URL the only URL that should be kept in History? Should we consider a different way of handling 301 redirects, perhaps showing each redirection as a new item in History?