idea Restrict characters in short URLs in ArcGIS Online Ideas

Restrict characters in short URLs

BBurkholder — Wed, 11 May 2022 23:01:37 GMT

Can some characters please be removed from the short URL generator? Having both O and 0 as possible characters in the URL makes sharing a challenge if users have to manually enter the URL. Neither should be used, IMO. Zero seems to be used a lot, for whatever reason.

I've tolerated this hiccup for years, but today I got a URL of https://arcg.is/0OKO0 (last character dropped for privacy). Not acceptable. I re-uploaded the file to get a better URL, but that's not always possible with some items.

Thanks!

Re: Restrict characters in short URLs

RobertBorchert — Wed, 11 May 2022 12:04:20 GMT

You could switch your display font to Terminal or Consolas and it would show a zero with a slash through it .

Re: Restrict characters in short URLs

BBurkholder — Wed, 11 May 2022 23:01:11 GMT

Yes @RobertBorchert, some fonts do make it easy to determine if 0 is zero, but capital o is still ambiguous if a user doesn't know which font they're looking at. We shouldn't need to account for this in sharing short URLs.

Re: Restrict characters in short URLs

RobertBorchert — Thu, 12 May 2022 11:34:16 GMT

O00

I would suggest using copy paste to share urls

Re: Restrict characters in short URLs

BBurkholder — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:00:31 GMT

Although it's been a year and I wouldn't be surprised if this simple idea was never implemented, I'd like to add that if I had my druthers, the following would also be excluded: 1, I, l, (those are: number one, upper case i, and lower case L, for those playing at home).

I've encountered 1 and i regularly, but upper & lower case L and upper case i may already be excluded? If so, why can't zero and upper case o be excluded from future short URLs?