The life of being optional.

If you were thinking of using Digg’s new URL shortening service to shorten that URL, think again. There has been a backlash on the web over Digg’s new URL shortening service because of the ‘DiggBar’. When someone clicks that URL you shortened, they’re presented with the DiggBar on the top of the page, with the content you wanted below it. The problem with this is Digg is using an <iframe> to display this, so the URL presented in the address bar is that of digg.com, not yours. In addition to this, if you click to another site, the address stays at digg.com.This is generally considered bad form on the internet and typically pisses people off.

For the simple fact of them framing the content, I have blocked people from trying to visit my site through a Digg shortened URL, when you do, you’ll be presented with this nice message:

Dear Digg,

Framing other people’s sites is uncool. Please, don’t use the DiggBar to shorten my URL’s.

Fuck off,

Me.

This has been installed for all my domains, so don’t bother.

There are other reasons why people are against the DiggBar, but this is my only reason. If you’re interested in what these reasons are, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has been doing a good job documenting the backlash on the blogosphere. It was from John where I got the code to block Digg (as well as BurnURL and Adjix, FWIW).