Gridforge Shortcuts

The URLs in Gridforge tend to get lengthy if they point to specific documents, or specific discussion posts etc. In order to allow to refer to such deep links in emails etc, and to help to remember those links, we introduced a shortcut system, similar to the well known tinyURL service. It works as follows:

Using Shortcuts

The upper menu bar will include a field named Shortcut, and a go button. If the user is logged in, it will also include a create button. The ShortCut textfield is either empty, if no shortcut yet exists for that page, or has a name filled in, which is the short name for this page. Next to the link are three buttons or items:

• ↵: If a shortcut name entered, that button will forward you to the target page. That is the default action, so also activates on pressing Enter in the text field.
• +: If a new shortcut name entered, that button will store that name, and will make it a shortcut for this page.
• -: If a shortcut is entered, that button will remove it. It does not only remove the shortcut for the current page, but removes whatever shortcut is entered!
• ?: This link points to the shortcut for the current page, if it exists, and allows you to copy/paste it (use Copy Link Location from the context menu).

Naming Shortcuts

Shortcut names are unique to a project!. For example, the shortcut 'docs' can be used for both the saga-rg project, and for the jsdl-wg project etc. The shortcut URLs will have the following form: http://forge.ogf.org/short/<project>/<shortcut>.

Nevertheless, it is possible to navigate accross project borders, by entering the form <project>/<shortcut> in the shortcut field. Project names will be normalized to all lowercase, and underscores will be replaced by hyphens. Shortcut key names are also normalized to all lowercase. So, the following two URLs describe identical pages: http://forge.ogf.org/short/PA_RG/Home and http://forge.ogf.org/short/pa-rg/home

Comments/Complains/Suggestions

Please post comments etc. here.

1. This is very minor issue but shortcut brings me to http://forge.ggf.org/* !? (Many thanks Andre, We really need this feature and I like it. 2006-01-16)
   • good point, will fix. easiest is to translate all incoming URLs to .ogf.org... -- AM
   • Should be fixed now. -- AM
2. Error: shortcuts created while logged in will fail (kind of) when used while not logged in, and vice versa. -- AM
   • Seems to be fixed now. I'd appreciate notifications if that still breaks for people! -- AM
3. From Michel: It should be possible to delete a shortcut
   • That is possible now. -- AM
4. It would be useful to be able to get a list of registered shortcuts per project. This may minimize the registration of multiple shortcuts to the same place and/or the re-definition of a shortcut by accident. To minimize the risk of accidentally re-defining a shortcut it may be nice to have some indication if a shortcut with the same name is already defined. -- AS